The diplomatic boycott led by the US on account of human rights or the anti-covid restrictions in a China isolated from the outside since 2020 threaten to tarnish the Winter Games that open this Friday in a country that has changed a lot since the first Olympic event that it housed, 14 years ago.
During this time, China has established itself as the second largest economy in the world and its diplomacy has gone from a markedly low profile to a much more assertive foreign policy with which it counterattacks Western criticism of the authoritarianism of its regime.
“China promised that if Beijing were chosen to host the 2008 Games, the human rights situation would improve. Not only did they fail to keep their promise, but things have gotten noticeably worse in recent years. Human rights violations have been perpetrated with greater frequency, scale and impunity”, denounces to Efe the investigator Alkan Akad of Amnesty International (AI).
The academic assures that while in 2008 there was a certain openness and the intention to show itself as a modern and responsible country, in the last 14 years “the repression has increased” on ethnic or religious minorities, activists, lawyers, journalists and all kinds of dissidents, in addition to imposing “greater censorship” and developing a “mass surveillance system”.
And if in 2008 the controversy was led by the protests in Tibet, attention now falls on the allegations of abuse in the Xinjiang region, in the northwest of the country, where some reports have estimated that up to one million members of the minority ethnic Uyghurs were locked up in re-education camps.
Beijing describes these accusations as “the lie of the century” and asserts that they were “provisional training centers” to improve the economy and society of the area, which in recent decades has suffered various terrorist attacks of a jihadist nature.
The alleged abuses caused the boycott of the United States and other countries such as Australia, Canada or the United Kingdom, although it is a political gesture that, in principle, will have no effect on the development of the competition.
“In 2008 there was also a similar tension, but the spectacular nature of those Games made them a tremendous success for their image. I think that this time it will not happen. The pandemic has marked the country, it has greatly increased mistrust and the perception on China. In addition, the Winter Games do not have the resonance of the Summer Games,” researcher Mario Esteban from the Elcano Royal Institute told Efe.
According to the academic, it is “undeniable” that, if 2008 is taken as a reference, there are aspects in which there have been “clear social setbacks”: “More restrictions on the Internet and on the media, which already came from a low level, or in academic life, like academic freedom, as well as the loss of civil liberties in Hong Kong and the situation in Xinjiang.”
“China is not at the best moment for these Games either because its ‘covid zero’ policy, although it has allowed it to register very low numbers of deaths, has isolated it from abroad,” he adds.
The Games, in fact, will be held under strict preventive measures, and athletes and workers from abroad will remain in a bubble isolated from any contact with the local population during their stay in the Chinese capital.
THE BEST DEFENSE IS A GOOD OFFENSE
Other researchers, like William Nee, of the human rights organization China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD, for its acronym in English), add “torture, forced confession or disappearance” to their lists, and they believe that “there is no sign that China is going to change its behaviour”.
“What’s more, the government will try to use the Games to show that it is respected globally,” he says. Nee to Eph.
For their part, the Chinese spokesmen insist that the country “has honored its word” to prepare “safe, clean and open” Games, and that these will embody values such as “solidarity, friendship, cooperation and world peace”. .
And when the boycott is mentioned, they go on the attack: “What the United States has done is to interfere in a malicious way. They have no moral authority or credibility. They talk about an alleged genocide in Xinjiang… Perhaps it is a subject they know well from the crimes that they committed against the North American natives”, blurted out in one of his last interventions the spokesman Zhao Lijiang.
He also stressed that Washington “does not represent the international community” and that “organizations, leaders, athletes and people from many countries have expressed their support” for the event.
So far, they have confirmed their attendance at the inauguration the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the leaders of countries such as Cambodia, Kazakhstan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, as well as the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, and the director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who will accompany the sports authorities headed by the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach.