Russian and Belarusian athletes were barred on Thursday from the Winter Paralympics in Beijing on the eve of the Games following threats of boycotts by other teams over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) said.
Belarus has been a key staging area for the invasion, which was launched a week ago.
The decision comes a day after the IPC gave athletes from the two countries the green light to participate as neutrals, saying that the governing body had followed its rules and that “athletes were not the aggressors.”
But that decision led to an outcry and threats from other countries’ National Paralympic Committees (NPC) to boycott the Games, IPC President Andrew Parsons told a news conference in Beijing.
“They told us that if we do not reconsider our decision, it is now likely to have grave consequences for the Winter Games,” Parsons said.
“Multiple NPCs, some of which have been contacted by their governments, teams and athletes, are threatening not to compete.”
Parsons said it was clear the situation put his organization in a “unique and impossible position” so close to the start of the Games, adding that an overwhelming number of members had been in touch and been forthright in their objections to Russia and Belarus taking part.
A 71-member Russian contingent and 12-member team from Belarus are already in Beijing for the Games, which begin on Friday.
Parsons said the Russian and Belarusian athletes were victims of the actions of their governments.
“Athlete welfare will always be a priority for us,” he said.
“If Russian and Belarusian athletes stayed in Beijing, nations were likely to withdraw, and a viable Games would not have been possible.
“The atmosphere in the Games village is not pleasant. The situation there is escalating and has now become untenable … The Games are not only about gold, silver and bronze, but also about sending a strong message of inclusion.”
Parsons said the IPC was likely to face legal consequences but was confident that the right decision had been made.
The IPC said earlier in a statement that following a specially convened meeting, its Governing Board has decided not to allow athletes from Russia and Belarus to take part.
With the same spirit that the athletes Jackeline Rentería and Érica Castaño managed to achieve heroic medals with which they played the national anthem in different sports venues in Colombia and other countries, they will seek to reach Congress.
For both, this new challenge is as complex as the competitions themselves, but they are confident of achieving one of the seats in the elections on March 13.
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The inequalities and difficulties that many Colombians have in their day-to-day lives, but especially in sports, have not been unrelated to former wrestler Rentería, who since she was little, in the Lleras Camargo neighborhood (Siloé), was already fighting her first life battles.
Photo:
Jackeline Renteria
Despite the obstacles, he managed to get ahead and bring joy to the country. Despite the challenges he faced, he believes that from politics can improve the conditions of many athletes so that they can bring more happiness than she gave to Colombia.
This is detailed in his campaign proposals, among which he seeks a new, more inclusive Sports Law.
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“One of the main flags that I have in my campaign is the transformation of the Sports Law into a law that goes hand in hand with the needs of sports and the community”, details the Olympic medalist.
Other of his proposals focus on the creation of the School Sports Federation aimed at promoting sports from early childhood. This implies “having a teacher qualified in Physical Education at all educational levels”.
Erica Castaño, from tragedy to sporting glory
Double silver medalist at the World Paraathletics Championships in London 2017. Fourth place and Paralympic diploma at Rio 2016 and silver and bronze medalist at the Toronto 2015 Parapan American Games, are part of the long list of achievements and sports titles that the athlete has achieved Erica Castaño in her career.
Behind these successes there was also the drama of being confined to a wheelchair, but the joy of overcoming obstacles and achieving triumphs for the country.
He remembers that his life changed on December 8, 2008 when in confusing events he was shot that caused a spinal cord injury at the T12 level that compromised his spine and prevented him from walking again.
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His spirit and strong character allowed him to overcome adversity and consecrate himself in the javelin and weight throwing at a national and international level.
Erica Castaño is also a double silver medalist at the World Paraathletics Championships in London 2017.
Now Castaño, who is also a lawyer specializing in Criminal Procedural Law and in Sports Direction and Management, seeks to reach the Chamber with the Radical Change party to continue fighting for sports and the region.
Among her proposals, the former athlete seeks the creation of a university sports league, as well as the tax treatment of incentives received by athletes as financial support.
He also wants to work for the chair of financial intelligence, access to sports as a tool for resocialization and redemption of sentence for the population deprived of liberty. For this he seeks to create the Prison Sports League.
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With the same spirit that the athletes Jackeline Rentería and Érica Castaño managed to achieve heroic medals with which they played the national anthem in different sports venues in Colombia and other countries, they will seek to reach Congress.
For both, this new challenge is as complex as the competitions themselves, but they are confident of achieving one of the seats in the elections on March 13.
(You may be interested in: The controversies of leaders of the Democratic Center for security in Cali)
The inequalities and difficulties that many Colombians have in their day-to-day lives, but especially in sports, have not been unrelated to former wrestler Rentería, who since she was little, in the Lleras Camargo neighborhood (Siloé), was already fighting her first life battles.
Photo:
Jackeline Renteria
Despite the obstacles, he managed to get ahead and bring joy to the country. Despite the challenges he faced, he believes that from politics can improve the conditions of many athletes so that they can bring more happiness than she gave to Colombia.
This is detailed in his campaign proposals, among which he seeks a new, more inclusive Sports Law.
(Also read: How would the seats for the House of Representatives for the Valley look?)
“One of the main flags that I have in my campaign is the transformation of the Sports Law into a law that goes hand in hand with the needs of sports and the community”, details the Olympic medalist.
Other of his proposals focus on the creation of the School Sports Federation aimed at promoting sports from early childhood. This implies “having a teacher qualified in Physical Education at all educational levels”.
Erica Castaño, from tragedy to sporting glory
Double silver medalist at the World Paraathletics Championships in London 2017. Fourth place and Paralympic diploma at Rio 2016 and silver and bronze medalist at the Toronto 2015 Parapan American Games, are part of the long list of achievements and sports titles that the athlete has achieved Erica Castaño in her career.
Behind these successes there was also the drama of being confined to a wheelchair, but the joy of overcoming obstacles and achieving triumphs for the country.
He remembers that his life changed on December 8, 2008 when in confusing events he was shot that caused a spinal cord injury at the T12 level that compromised his spine and prevented him from walking again.
(Also: Cali: citizens have not collected more than 30,000 processed IDs)
His spirit and strong character allowed him to overcome adversity and consecrate himself in the javelin and weight throwing at a national and international level.
Erica Castaño is also a double silver medalist at the World Paraathletics Championships in London 2017.
Now Castaño, who is also a lawyer specializing in Criminal Procedural Law and in Sports Direction and Management, seeks to reach the Chamber with the Radical Change party to continue fighting for sports and the region.
Among her proposals, the former athlete seeks the creation of a university sports league, as well as the tax treatment of incentives received by athletes as financial support.
He also wants to work for the chair of financial intelligence, access to sports as a tool for resocialization and redemption of sentence for the population deprived of liberty. For this he seeks to create the Prison Sports League.
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Anthony Shiu was born in San Francisco. His father’s parents are from China. Several generations may separate him from China, but the 60-year-old transit mechanic spends his free time as an activist against anti-Asian hate crimes and helping to run a lion dance troupe. Lion dances are a facet of traditional Chinese culture.
In that spirit, he backs Beijing as the 2022 Winter Olympics host city despite a litany of Sino-U.S. political issues that culminated last month in Washington’s decision to boycott the Games diplomatically. He plans to watch the world sporting event on TV if time allows.
“To me, Beijing is just a hosting country, and the committee said, ‘We’re going to hold it here,’ so where they hold it is not important to me,” Shiu told VOA during an interview in Portsmouth Square park at the core of San Francisco’s historic Chinatown.
Shiu’s ideas about the Beijing Winter Olympics reflect those of many fellow Chinese Americans: China has the right to hold the Olympics despite Western condemnations of the country over human rights problems. Still, there’s a faction that would prefer Beijing not host the Games.
“It’s a sport,” said 38-year-old Vincent Fung, a Chinese American operator of the Buddha Exquisite Corp. paper goods store in Chinatown. “People should respect (that), it doesn’t matter what race. That’s what the Olympics stands for. So, if you’re boycotting things, that defeats the purpose of having the game. That’s my view on it.”
Chinese American Sherwin Won, 69, a retired university clinical lab scientist from San Francisco, skis and plans to watch the Olympics. He even hopes to visit Beijing someday, post-COVID-19. “The team members have nothing to do with China,” Won said of participating foreign athletes. “It’s their sports.”
Human rights groups gather to call for a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022, in Taipei, Jan. 26, 2022.
Tension over Taiwan, Hong Kong, Uyghurs
Supporters of diplomatic boycotts in multiple Western countries have called out Beijing over perceived strong-arm tactics toward Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Critics, including politicians in the U.S., EU and human rights organizations, also find fault with China for its treatment of the largely Muslim Uyghur population in the Chinese Xinjiang region, including sending more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Turkic ethnic minorities to internment camps.
China has denied these accusations, saying the camps are vocational training centers to help alleviate poverty and fight extremism.
In the United States, White House press secretary Jen Psaki last month said the administration would avoid sending officials to the Games — the diplomatic boycott — due to “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.”
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said, “The United States should stop politicizing sports, and stop disrupting and undermining the Beijing Winter Olympics, lest it should affect bilateral dialogue and cooperation in important areas and international and regional issues,” according to Chinese state media Xinhua.
Hot and cold Sino-U.S. history
Sino-U.S. ties blossomed in the 1970s after then-U.S. President Richard Nixon’s historic meeting with Communist leader Mao Zedong. The same decade saw a wave of immigration from southern China to American cities such as San Francisco, mostly to earn money and join relatives who were already in the country.
About 5 million Chinese Americans live in the United States today, census data show.
A man walks past installations of Bing Dwen Dwen,left, and Shuey Rhon Rhon, mascots of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics Games, along a street in Beijing on Jan. 28, 2022.
Relations have slipped since 2017 over trade friction, consular spats and technology transfer issues. The two superpowers have jousted too over the autonomy of Taiwan, with Beijing calling it a Chinese territory and Washington offering to defend it, and crackdowns against antigovernment protesters in Chinese-ruled Hong Kong.
Some Chinese Americans often feel distant from human rights causes, and as ethnic Han people — China’s vast racial majority — are not “sympathetic to the Uyghurs,” said Yun Sun, co-director of the East Asia program at the Stimson Center in Washington.
“Second, the boycott apparently makes bilateral relations more difficult, and it is even harder for Chinese Americans to travel back to China,” Sun added.
Sporting concerns
Justine Chen, 38, a Nashville, Tennessee-based communications director of Taiwanese American ancestry, says Beijing qualifies more as a showroom for the government than as an elite venue for athletes.
“I don’t think they should have won the bid in the first place. Not just because of their human rights record but because I don’t think they provide the best experience for athletes nor spectators,” she said. “It’s all a big show so the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) can pretend it has its affairs together when it really doesn’t.”
Chen attended the Beijing Summer Games of 2008 and the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Sydney offered better venues, she said.
“I think as a minority in America that has seen a huge amount of hate and violence over the past two years against people who look like me, I wish I could have more pride in an Asian country hosting such a large event that’s supposed to unify people of all kinds, including those participating in the Paralympics,” Chen said.
Human rights concerns
Many people of Asian ancestry in Southern California oppose China’s acts in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, said Ken Wu, Taiwanese American vice president of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs Los Angeles chapter. His Washington, D.C.-based group lobbies Congress for pro-Taiwan legislation.
They support diplomatic boycotts but also a guarantee that athletes can attend the Beijing Olympics as a reward for their practice, he said.
“Right now, I think the whole advocacy community and the whole human rights community are kind of agreeing on that’s the direction we should go,” Wu said. “We should continue to pressure the states to exercise the diplomatic boycott and also hopefully we can get the businesses not to sponsor, but let’s put our support behind our athletes.”
While Chinese Americans differ on their views of China as the host city of the Winter Olympics, they all stand behind the athletes who have worked to qualify for a spot in what has become a contentious world competition.
Human rights activists issued a call to action against the Beijing Olympics on Friday, imploring athletes and sponsors to speak out against what they call the “genocide games.”
Speaking at an online press conference organized by the rights group Human Rights Watch, activists representing Chinese dissidents and the minority Uyghur and Tibetan populations urged international attendants to voice their opposition to China’s hosting of the Games, which begin next week.
“The 2022 Winter Olympics will be remembered as the genocide games,” said Teng Biao, a former human rights activist in China who is now a visiting professor at the University of Chicago.
In this image taken from video footage of an online press conference by Human Rights Watch on AP Video, Teng Biao, visiting professor at the University of Chicago, speaks about the upcoming Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, Jan. 28, 2022.
“The CCP’s purpose is to exactly turn the sports arena into a stage for political legitimacy and a tool to whitewash all those atrocities,” he added, referring to the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
China’s crackdown under hardline ruler Xi Jinping has been felt across wide swaths of society. Hong Kong authorities crushed anti-government protests in the city in 2019, and the central government in Beijing passed a national security law aimed at stifling dissent, leading to the arrest of activists and disbandment of civil society groups.
Meanwhile, in the country’s western region of Xinjiang, an estimated 1 million people or more — most of them Uyghurs — have been confined in reeducation camps in recent years, according to researchers.
An independent, unofficial body set up by a prominent British barrister to assess evidence on China’s alleged rights abuses against the Uyghur people concluded in December that the Chinese government committed genocide. China has consistently denied any human rights abuses in the region and has said it carried out its actions to counter extremism in the region in order to ensure people’s safety.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin has hit back at the rights group for its continued calls to boycott the Olympics, saying that “the so-called human rights group is biased against China and keen on making mischief. Lies and rumors it fabricated are unpopular. Its egregious acts that harm the Olympic cause will never succeed.”
The Foreign Ministry has also said the Olympics should not be politicized. Yet the competition is already facing a diplomatic boycott led by the U.S., whose relationship with China has nosedived in the past few years.
Activists have failed to achieve a full boycott of the games, but have continued to speak out.
FILE – Human right groups gather on the United Nations international Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, 2021, to call for a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 in front of the Bank of China building in Taipei, Taiwan.
“Your silence is their strength. This is what they want more than anything: that the world will play by China’s rules, that we will follow China’s lead, that we will look away from these atrocities and crimes for the sake of business as usual,” said Lhadon Tethong, director of the Tibet Action Institute, at the press conference Friday.
She appealed directly to athletes from the U.S., UK, France and others to speak.
“I personally believe that you should use your platform and your privilege and this historic opportunity. You have to speak out against the wave of genocide,” she said.
