China's despotism dims Olympic Games

On Friday, the Olympic flame will be lit at the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Games in Beijing. When it's extinguished at the Feb. 20 Closing Ceremony, it should also douse the awarding of the Games to authoritarian nations with horrendous human-rights records.

The U.S. State Department's most recent human-rights report has accurately called China's oppression of mostly Muslim ethnic groups in its northwest Xinjiang region "crimes against humanity" and "genocide." China's bellicosity toward Taiwan — as well as its suppression of Hong Kong, Tibet and independent-thinking citizens everywhere — betrays human and Olympic ideals, as codified by the International Olympic Committee itself.

The United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia are among countries rightly engaging in a diplomatic boycott — sending athletes but not envoys or politicians. It's understandable that many supported going further with a full boycott, as the U.S. did with the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.

But it's highly unlikely that would change China's policies, and it's highly likely that the consequence would be that China, its increasingly compliant ally Russia and perhaps other countries would boycott the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, resulting in erosion or complete collapse of an already fraught but valuable Olympic movement.

That doesn't mean that those taking part in the Beijing Games shouldn't make their disapproval known. While there are understandable IOC rules on not marring competitions, medal ceremonies and other key events, athletes, coaches and officials should use appropriate opportunities to call for freedoms in China, as well as express disappointment in the IOC for awarding the Winter Olympics to Beijing.

Olympic announcers shouldn't shy away from the issues, either, and they may have more leeway to do so since most will be calling the Games from studios in America rather than the slopes, rinks or other venues in China. Journalists in Beijing — including the Star Tribune's Rachel Blount and La Velle E. Neal III — will likely comment on the controversies, too. Chinese journalists, however, will be strictly constricted, as they are every day under China's pervasive surveillance and abysmal abuse of reporters.

Given the geopolitical context, the COVID-constricted crowds and other factors dimming the flame, it would be a rational reaction if viewers staged their own form of protest and tuned out the Games. But it's just as justifiable if they decide the inspiration of athletes competing at their highest levels against the best in the world is what they need now.

Minnesotans, in particular, may want to support the strong contingent of 30 athletes with Minnesota ties. Some are already household names, like cross-country skier Jessie Diggins and some of the 18 hockey players — nine on the women's team, nine on the men's — connected to Minnesota. One Minnesotan, curler John Shuster, isn't just representing the state, but the nation as Team USA's male flag-bearer at the Opening Ceremony.

While the IOC has been shamefully silent about Beijing — and Sochi before that — it does seem to be leaning in the right direction. The committee was caught with only two finalists for the 2022 Olympics — Beijing and close runner-up Almaty, which just saw a legitimate protest movement quashed by the Kazakhstan government (with repression help from Russia, of course). But in a welcome decision, the IOC has awarded the next Winter Olympics in 2026 to Milan and Cortina in Italy.

And the next three Summer Olympics will take place in democracies, too: Paris in 2024, Los Angeles in 2028 and Brisbane in 2032. The leading candidates for the 2030 Winter Games also are democratic nations. The IOC should not be neutral about human rights. Indeed, it should insist on them.