Platitudes about ‘peace’ and ‘mutual respect’ abound — but not a word about genocide.
Platitudes about ‘peace’ and ‘mutual respect’ abound — but not a word about genocide.
W hile several Western democracies staged a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics over the Uyghur genocide, U.N. secretary-general António Guterres and World Health Organization director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attended the opening ceremony and other Olympics-related events that the Chinese Communist Party used to whitewash its human-rights atrocities and promote its agenda.
The participation of the two U.N. officials in the Olympic events is likely to fuel concerns in Washington, New York, and elsewhere that they are beholden to the Chinese government. Earlier this week, a South China Morning Post report alleged that the U.N. was withholding a report compiled in 2019 about the mass atrocities against Uyghurs so as not to embarrass China during the Olympics, and the U.N. secretariat has been conspicuously silent about the widely discussed abuses.
Guterres and Tedros, who each arrived in Beijing on Thursday, had a number of meetings in the Chinese capital and were expected to take part in a banquet with Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping.
Today’s opening ceremony, according to Chinese state-media outlet the Global Times, attracted 32 foreign dignitaries, including Guterres and Tedros, Russian president Vladimir Putin, and Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.
That event was, predictably, a blatant exercise in Chinese Communist Party propaganda. A Uyghur athlete, Dinigeer Yilamujiang, lit the Olympic flame — a move that human-rights advocates say was intended to obscure Beijing’s crimes against humanity targeting Uyghurs and other Turkic minority groups.
Guterres’s thoughts on that aspect of the ceremony are unknown, though in the lead-up to the Olympics he dodged questions about whether he intends to raise the issue of the party’s genocide of Uyghurs with Chinese officials. Instead, he said his attendance at the event would be a nonpolitical visit. He hailed the Olympic spirit of peace as more important than ever, citing rising racism, white supremacy, antisemitism, and anti-Muslim hatred. Guterres has also declined to characterize the Chinese Communist Party’s actions in Xinjiang as crimes against humanity.
Just before leaving New York for Beijing, Guterres sat for an interview with China’s state-run Xinhua News, extolling the Olympics’ “fantastic message of ‘peace and of mutual respect between people of all cultures, all civilizations and all ethnicities.’”
In his video message to the world ahead of the ceremony this morning, Guterres said he hoped the spirit celebrated by the Olympics would remind people “that we belong to the same human family.”
Also prior to the opening ceremony, Tedros, who is unopposed in his bid for a second term at the helm of WHO, played a role in an event that the party used to promote its expansionist ambitions. His participation in the Olympic torch relay, which was severely truncated compared to those in past years owing to the pandemic, is significant because of the Chinese military’s involvement in the event.
Notably, before Tedros donned his red-and-white Olympic tracksuit and “Beijing 2022” hat, Chinese state-media outlets were touting the selection of a People’s Liberation Army officer from the Xinjiang command, Qi Fabao, as one of the other Olympic torchbearers. Last June, Qi was injured when leading a nighttime attack on Indian forces in a disputed Sino–Indian border region. India responded yesterday by announcing a boycott of the Olympics.
A WHO spokesperson told the Global Times that Tedros accepted the Olympic invite “because the event provides a powerful platform for advancing multilateral collaboration” and noted the global health body’s close relationship with the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
All of this is likely to heighten scrutiny of the U.N.’s close relationship with the IOC, which has increasingly taken a hardline pro–Chinese Communist Party stance — a position that has inspired some U.S. lawmakers to advocate human-rights sanctions for IOC leaders. Guterres held a meeting with IOC president Thomas Bach ahead of the opening ceremony.
The increased focus on the U.N.’s China ties during the Olympics is liable to cause a headache for the Biden administration, which has said that it is pursuing a foreign policy centered on human-rights promotion and engagement with international organizations. Soon after President Biden took office, the U.S. rescinded the Trump-era directive ordering the U.S. to leave the WHO, and despite widespread criticism in the U.S. of the WHO leader’s handling of the Covid pandemic, the administration declined to oppose Tedros’s bid for a second term. The Biden administration also declined to oppose Guterres’s campaign for a second five-year term last year.
After today, the administration may regret those decisions. In the weeks leading up the Games, Guterres heard pleas from U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. lawmakers, and over 250 human-rights groups to boycott the Olympics. He went ahead with his trip to Beijing anyway.