China has Uyghur athlete bear Olympic torch as athlete safety concerns remain
Pro-democracy activist Nathan Law joined 'America Reports' to discuss what the incident could signal as concern for athlete safety continues.
The Chinese regime is hiding no more. At the Winter Olympics, a proud – and arrogant – ruling group is flaunting an image the world abhors.
Beijing, for instance, chose Qi Fabao as a torchbearer. The colonel, a "Galwan Valley border clash hero" according to Communist Party media, led a surprise attack on the night of June 15, 2020, deep in Indian-controlled territory in the Himalayas. Twenty Indian troopers were killed, and Qi suffered a four-inch gash on his forehead.
Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng lights the torch before the start of the torch relay for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing on Feb. 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Sam McNeil)
New Delhi was outraged. It had planned to send diplomats to the opening and closing ceremonies. After the announcement that Qi would carry the torch in a relay, however, India pulled its representation, joining the American-led diplomatic boycott of the Games.
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"The torchbearers of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics are broadly representative and meet the selection standards," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian at a press conference, in response to New Delhi’s boycott. "What I want to say is that we hope relevant party can view the torchbearers in an objective and rational way and refrain from making politicized interpretation."
Thomas Bach rushed to Beijing’s defense. The International Olympic Committee president, responding to a question about Col. Qi, pointed out that a British veteran was a torchbearer in the 2012 London Summer Games.
The two cases, however, are not comparable. Ricky Furgusson, who lost both legs in Afghanistan, was fighting terrorists who had attacked innocent civilians. Qi, on the other hand, was an aggressor, leading a sneak attack on soldiers defending their own soil.
China’s crimes, I think, are worse than those of the Third Reich during the mid-1930s.
"While various countries feature their military at events like the Olympics, in this case official Chinese media made the unusual move of identifying his specific engagement, calling him a ‘hero’ of Galwan, and making it clear he was chosen because he was involved in the attack that killed Indians," said Cleo Paskal of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies to me, referring to Qi. "What this signals to New Delhi is that India is now on the official list of Communist Party enemies – along with fellow Quad members Japan, the United States and Australia. Beijing is telling the Chinese people that killing Indians is something worth celebrating."
Beijing has made the Games more than a celebration of murdering Indian soldiers. The Communist Party is boasting about two genocides. First, Uyghur cross-country skier Dinigeer Yilamujiang lit the Olympic flame along with a "Han" athlete.
China’s regime is committing genocide by, among other acts, killing Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities as well as forcing abortions and sterilizations. The Chinese regime is also committing crimes against humanity – mass detentions, torture, rape, organ harvesting and slavery – against them. In addition, its treatment of Tibetans is barbaric.
Commentators are fond of comparing the ongoing Winter Games to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. China’s crimes, I think, are worse than those of the Third Reich during the mid-1930s.
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China’s second genocide was the deliberate spread of COVID-19 beyond its borders. Chinese leaders in January 2020 told the world that the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen was not readily transmissible when they knew it was highly contagious and, while locking down their own country, tried to persuade others to take arrivals from China without restrictions. It was those arrivals that turned a disease that should have been confined to the central part of China into a pandemic quickly reaching every corner of the planet.
COVID-19 has now claimed, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, 5.8 million lives outside China, including more than 924,000 Americans.
This is a "genocide"? The intentional spread, the first time in history that one nation has attacked every other one, meets the definition of that term in Article II of the Genocide Convention of 1948 because the Chinese regime targeted a specific group, non-Chinese people.
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China highlighted its horrific crime by having World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus serve as a torchbearer. Beijing used WHO to propagate its false assessments of non-transmissibility and thereby lull the world into not taking precautions. The global health body was complicit in China’s crime because the organization’s senior doctors, from the first reports of outbreaks, knew the coronavirus was highly contagious.
China’s Global Times, a Communist Party tabloid, last week said China is holding the Olympics "to promote world peace." No, the Chinese regime, with its choice of torchbearers, is using the Olympic stage to promote genocidal and murderous acts.
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