China parading Galwan soldier at Winter Games is indefensible

Short of welcoming foreign athletes at the airport with placards of Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter, which prohibit them from demonstrating or displaying political, religion or racial propaganda, Beijing and the IOC did everything to intimidate athletes into silence. But Chinese officials don’t seem to have read the rule themselves.

Chilling athletes into silence by spelling out the jeopardy of binding Olympic rules and the Chinese judicial system is the sort of controlled self-censorship that can tunnel athletes into sticking to sport. But getting state media like Global Times to cackle and crow about a military commander who was in recent combat with India, and parading him in a torch relay — perhaps for the benefit of a domestic audience — flies in the face of China’s obligation to sanitise sport of any whiff of politics. This was partisan politics literally running with a boastful beacon.

While countries have always put soft-sells of cultural, nationalistic propaganda on show at opening ceremonies, and been indulged by the IOC, Fabao’s is a blatant and curiously undignified flaunting. War wounds — on either soldiering side — are far too real and honourable, to promenade around at a jogger’s pace for a mere sporting spectacle. It’s an unwritten line of civility crossed, as sporting hosts.

India might not be travelling with the largest contingent to the Games. But political point-scoring against a military opponent on the sidelines of an Olympic Games, by drawing on confrontational symbolism as a measure of “bravery”, is frankly indefensible. If it is unnecessary for athletes to drift away from their job at hand — to win — and use the podium to express their concerns over myriad issues in China, surely it would count as entirely avoidable for the hosts to use the Games as a ramp-way for battle-wounds.

India responded with a last-minute diplomatic boycott, after committing to show up and stand by China and Russia at the BRICS summit. It declared that its diplomatic presence was untenable, and its envoy declined the invitation to the ceremony after the torchbearer provocation; India also pulled out of telecasting the opener. A US Senate Foreign Relations Committee member dubbed Beijing’s choice of a military commander as a torchbearer as “shameful”. But the world might well let this slide.

Commercial considerations have leashed the biggest powers from calling out China for this contempt. UK’s tripling trade deficit with China post-Brexit, and other western economies’ dependence mean athletes in Beijing are shorn of protections in case they choose to voice any thoughts unpalatable to the hosts. A senior official of the Beijing Organising Committee and an Olympic champion, Yang Yang, was quoted from a news conference last week, saying, “Athletes need to be responsible for what they say.”

It is not uncommon for athletes belonging to armed forces to turn up at the Olympics to represent their countries in competition. But it is entirely looked down on if territorial tensions and scars are directly dragged onto a sporting field, in this case as part of relaying the Games flame. Sport is no stage for militarised cosplay, never mind the countless war analogies it riffs off.

The IOC dropped all pretence of this being solely about sport, when Thomas Bach at a pre-event news meet declared for the benefit of ski lift and snow cannon manufacturers: “The boom in China will change the global winter sports industry. All the companies that are mainly based in the Alps and North America will benefit greatly from the development of winter sports in China.” It is well-known that several struggling companies are invested in building the ski-resort winter economy of China.

In one of his most absurd pleas to athletes to say nothing unsavoury and political and stay confined to the sporting lane, Bach invoked Shakespeare. “If an actor is engaging in the theatre, playing Hamlet, then nobody expects him to voice his political opinion. And the same is true there for the athlete.” A rather unfortunate reference, given the play’s un-silenceable ghost and perhaps theatre’s most famous soliloquy. To be or not to be was the question. For India’s diplomatic dilemma, a Chinese soldier from Galwan in the torch-run was
one stab too many, well after the poison dripped into the ear.

shivani.naik@expressindia.com