“Completely guilty of propaganda”: Athletes attack the IOC in the Peng Shuai case

“Completely guilty of propaganda”
Athletes attack the IOC in the Peng Shuai case

On Sunday the IOC announced: Peng Shuai is fine, she will dine with Thomas Bach next year. There’s even a video about it. But the international athlete community doesn’t leave a good hair at the IOC. That makes itself “complicit in the malicious propaganda” of China.

In the case of the Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai, the sports association Global Athlete has sharply criticized the conduct of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and renewed calls for sanctions against the upcoming Olympic host China. The ring organization’s press release on Sunday about a video call between President Thomas Bach and Peng, who has since disappeared, made “the IOC complicit in the malicious propaganda of the Chinese authorities that do not care about basic human rights and justice,” said Global Athlete an opinion with.

It was “relieved that Peng Shuai is alive, but the confirmation of a conversation with the tennis star by the IOC does not guarantee their safety or well-being,” it said. Rather, the IOC press release is a “harmful attempt to appease both concerned athletes and the Chinese authorities.” It “pretended that Peng had never made allegations of sexual assault and that she had not disappeared for more than two weeks”. Bach and the IOC Athletes Commission showed “a hideous indifference to sexual violence and the well-being of women athletes”.

IOC simply relieved

As a result, Global Athlete renewed its request on Friday that the IOC “suspend the Chinese Olympic Committee immediately until Peng Shuai can safely leave China and a full and transparent investigation into their allegations of sexual assault is conducted.” China, with its capital Beijing, will host the 2022 Winter Olympics (February 4th to 20th).

Peng Shuai wrote on the Twitter-like medium Weibo earlier this month that he had been sexually abused by former Chinese Deputy Prime Minister Zhang Gaoli. The entry was deleted as well as numerous Internet entries about Peng, of which there was no trace afterwards. Numerous athletes, sports organizations and also political representatives had expressed their great concern about the former world number one in doubles and asked China to clarify the case transparently.

On Sunday, the state media initially distributed short video clips that were supposed to show Peng at current events. The IOC later spread the news that it had spoken to Peng via video telephony. “I was relieved to see that Peng Shuai was fine, which was our main concern. She seemed relaxed. I offered to support her and keep in touch with her at all times, which she obviously appreciated “, Emma Terho, chairwoman of the IOC Athletes’ Commission, was quoted as saying.

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