The head of the International Olympic Committee has said the games should never be a forum for “political issues”, as the organisers dodged a question about China’s persecuted Uyghur population.
“If you want to have the Games only between [those] whose governments agree on every political situation, the Games would lose their universality,” Thomas Bach told a press conference on Thursday after being asked about the mostly Muslim Uyghurs.
“That would lead to the end of the Olympic Games,” the IOC president said on the eve of the Beijing winter Games opening ceremony on Friday. “We are not commenting on political issues.”
Bach’s plea for the Olympics to be apolitical came as several western nations, including the US, UK and Australia, staged a diplomatic boycott over China’s persecution of Uyghurs in the country’s Xinjiang province. It highlighted the delicate balance faced by the organisers as the quadrennial Games begins against a backdrop of heightened geopolitical tensions.
India’s foreign ministry said late on Thursday that it would not send its top diplomat in the opening ceremony after a Chinese soldier injured in a border clash with India was selected to be among the carriers of the Olympic torch. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, will meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday as Russian forces continue their military build up around Ukraine.
The IOC also said it had not yet undertaken a planned meeting between Bach and Peng Shuai, the Chinese tennis star who made allegations of sexual assault against a former high-ranking Chinese Communist party official and since recanted them. She has made few public appearances since first posting the allegations to her Weibo account late last year.
“It’s her life, it’s her allegations. We’ve heard the allegations, we’ve heard the withdrawal and we’ll have this personal meeting [and] continue the conversation”, Bach said. Both he and the IOC have come under fire for their “quiet diplomacy” approach to ascertaining Peng’s whereabouts and safety, which tennis officials have deemed “insufficient”.
Bach said he and the IOC were awaiting Peng’s entry into the restrictive Olympic bubble — set up to avoid transmission of the virus to and from the wider population — before such a meeting could take place.
Local Beijing Games organisers on Thursday reported the highest daily total of coronavirus cases yet, with 55 testing positive within the bubble, more than total current cases in China at 39.
The rising caseload mounts pressure on authorities to restrict the spread of the pandemic over the course of the strictly controlled event.
“We’re confident the system will work,” said Brian McCloskey, chair of the Beijing 2022 expert medical panel, who suggested cases would fall after all participants had arrived. “But we’ll not yet relax. We keep all measures in place,” he added.
Since January 23, there have been 287 positive results at the event from more than 610,000 tests. The latest data was made up of 26 people already in the bubble and 29 new arrivals.
The IOC does not break down the numbers for infected athletes compared with other Games participants. But several athletes who returned positive tests faced personal anguish on the eve of their biggest event.
Kim Meylemans, a Belgian skeleton racer, posted a tearful video on Instagram documenting her frustration after she was initially removed from the athletes’ village following her positive Covid-19 test.
“This is very hard for me”, she said. “I’m not sure I can handle 14 more days and the Olympic competition while being this isolated”. Meylemans was later moved to an isolation room within the village.
Olympics chief rejects talk of ‘political issues’ on eve of Beijing games
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