The authoritarian challenge to democracy and human rights is arguably the defining geopolitical story of our time. Instead of bucking this trend, the IOC appears to be partaking in it. stream says His group’s primary responsibility is to host the Games in accordance with the Olympic Charter. But this charter speaks of “promoting a peaceful society concerned with respect for human dignity” – goals that are impossible to reconcile with the IOC’s unwillingness to confront critics and denounce human rights abuses. Given the opportunity to reconcile their feelings and actions, the Olympics overlords have instead hastened the years-long transformation of the Games into an economic juggernaut and ideological black hole with sport attached to its flank.
Although host countries have long used the Olympics to advance national goals, and grassroots activism and the Olympics have also long gone hand in hand. Activists ahead of the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, held amid the Great Depression sung “Food, no games! Olympics is outrageous!” In the 1970s, dissidents in Denver — a coalition of tax conservatives concerned with misusing public funds and liberal environmentalists alarmed at potential ecological damage — forced the IOC to move the Olympic Games to Innsbruck. The three recent Olympic Games in Tokyo, Pyeongchang and Rio de Janeiro saw significant protests over issues such as: cost overruns and shift.
The Beijing 2008 Olympics also sparked protests from activists, with global human rights advocates using the event to point the finger at China’s growing authoritarianism. Archbishop Desmond Tutu pushed a worldwide boycott of the opening ceremony. Celebrities such as Mia Farrow and Richard Gere also advocated a boycott, and finally Steven Spielberg retired as artistic advisor because of China’s policy in the Darfur conflict to the games. As the Olympic torch relay zigzagged around the world, protesters in London, Paris and San Francisco, pro-Tibet chants roared and signs waved denouncing China’s human rights abuses.
The human rights opening promised by Beijing and the IOC never came. In fact, Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, said claims that the opposite happened. Hosting the Beijing Olympics, she writes, was “a catalyst for abuses that led to massive evictions, a spike in arrests, detentions and harassment of critics, repeated violations of media freedoms, and mounting political repression.” China used the Olympics not only to step up domestic audience surveillance, but also to market newfangled surveillance systems to the world.
As Yaqiu Wang, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said me, “In 2008, much of the international community still believed that if China gave the Summer Olympics, it would make it easier for China to become a more liberalized, human rights-respecting country. Obviously that didn’t happen and few believe that for the Winter Games today.”
Fast forward to 2015. Beijing bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics alongside winter sports powerhouses like Oslo and Stockholm, and rising stars like Lviv, Ukraine, and Almaty, Kazakhstan. The bid came amid rising anti-Olympic sentiment, while other bids were brought to their knees by public referendums and anti-Games groups popping up in almost every potential Olympic city. The notion that hosting the Olympic Games could be a catalyst for positive change was quickly forgotten. Public referendums torpedoed prospective tenders in Kraków, Poland and in Munich and Graubünden, Switzerland. Voters were put off by the sky-high Olympic costs, strict safety requirements and a growing sense that the Olympics would do their cities more harm than good.
After essentially all Democratic bidders dropped out, the IOC ended up with only two options – Beijing and Almaty. The Lords of the Olympic Rings chose what they knew better: China.
Were the IOC to use its influence on autocratic hosts to urge change, or if it simply used its own behavior to set an example, some critics might be more forgiving. Instead, the group itself seems to be slipping deeper and deeper into an opaque, autocratic approach.
Jens Weinreich, a German investigative journalist who has been following Olympic power brokers for three decades, told me: “The IOC itself is a totalitarian system. More than ever.”
part of the story critics argue, is a change of leadership. When Beijing bid to host the 2022 Games, the IOC centralized power under its new President Thomas Bach, a German lawyer and 1976 Olympic fencing champion who was first elected in 2013. Last summer, when Bach announced he was seeking another term, he was reportedly walking the virtual space as president, calling out committee members as they lavished praise on Bach. “We have a captain, and that captain is you‘ said an IOC member New York Times. Bach was re-elected with even dictator numbers: 93-1 with four abstentions.
Of course, the IOC’s problems did not begin with Bach. Still, under his leadership, the organization has taken an ironclad approach. Bach has changed the rules surrounding the bidding process several times. The actual IOC has become one rubber stamp organization, while real power resides in smaller “future hosting commissions‘ by less than a dozen IOC members. that of the group lack of receptivity to the athlete is dissent well documentedhow is what the Just called a “culture of honor” towards Bach. Olympic contenders avoid public referendums, and discussions now take place behind closed doors. Last summer, the IOC hand over the 2032 Summer Olympics to Brisbane, despite very little public discussion of the bid — not to mention a referendum that critics had been pushing for to give the city’s residents a say.
During the tendering process 2022 Norwegian and international media reported that the IOC has issued a highfalutin list requirements – including a private meeting with the King of Norway, separate entrances and exits for IOC members at Oslo Airport and meeting rooms kept at a precise 20 degrees Celsius temperature at all times. The IOC denied making any such claims, naming the reports “Half-truths and factual inaccuracies”, but the damage was done. Norway withdrew Oslo’s bid amid growing concerns, and the IOC was made to look more like a gang of crooked princes than a serious sports bureaucracy.
Weinreich, the German journalist who has written extensively about Bach’s tenureHe told me, “The IOC has never been as authoritarian as it was under Thomas Bach.” He added, “No IOC President has ever had such absolute power.”
The IOC has willingly hitched its wagon to China, showing gullibility at every step. The committee has consistently distracted calls for action to be taken against human rights violations in China. When the Coalition to End Forced Labor in the Uyghur Region, an alliance of more than 300 groups, tried to meet with the IOC, they were initially blocked. Eventually, the committee agreed to meet — but not to get involved. The IOC would not share information with its critics; the meeting would be just a “Practice active listening.” The IOC declined to comment on this article.
With the recent rise in athlete activism, one might think the Olympians traveling to Beijing would seize the opportunity to tell the truth to those in power. However, athletes proceed with extreme caution. The progressive, athlete-led group Global Athlete is Advising against activism in Beijing. Noah Hoffman, two-time US Olympic gold medalist in cross-country skiing, told me, “I’ve thought a lot about speaking out in Beijing if I were to attend these games. I don’t think I would do that. … The benefits of speaking out do not outweigh the risks.”
Hoffman says he would not ask those who compete to take a risk that he would not. “That’s why I advise athletes to remain silent during their stay in China. It pains me to do this because… I believe that athletes should use their platforms to stand up for the things they believe in and that they can be powerful forces for positive change. I would never advise an athlete to remain silent, but in this situation I feel like I have no choice.”
There is no question that China is far more powerful today than it was last time it hosted the Olympics. Between 2008 and 2021 China’s gross domestic product more than tripled. Its economy has evolved from being primarily export-oriented to one where domestic consumption accounts for about half of all economic activity. China has weaponized its domestic consumer demand, attacking textile giants H&M and Nike with a boycott after the companies raised concerns about forced labor by Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Unsurprisingly, the International Olympic Committee says so can not guarantee that its official uniforms are not made by forced labor.
Close observers of China see a marked deterioration in these Olympics, even since 2008. Teng Biao, a Chinese human rights lawyer living in exile in the US, told me, “Before these Winter Olympics, the Chinese government violated human rights and suppressed freedom much more blatantly than in 2008. Worse, Xi Jinping and the Chinese leadership are not pretending to be cosmopolitan this time. They have expelled foreign journalists, enforced more censorship, intimidated athletes, closed down foreign NGOs and sanctioned critical voices.”
The IOC has largely dismissed this, insisting that it remain politically neutral in view of China’s massive human rights violations. But in the current political climate, “neutrality” is not the virtue they claim to be. The committee would do well to consider Desmond Tutus attitude: “He who is neutral in situations of injustice has chosen the side of the oppressor.”
Of course, not everyone wants to remain silent. Activist groups are already planning demonstrations around the world to draw attention to the toll the Olympics is taking on host cities and the people who live there. But they have good reason to be pessimistic about the Olympics themselves. For 15 years in a row according to Freedom House, Countries that experienced declines in their overall freedom outnumbered those that saw gains. The IOC is of course not a country. But it’s clear which side of that ledger the organization is on.