The International Olympic Committee’s recommendation to ban Russian athletes from the Paralympic Games in Beijing in the wake of the Ukraine invasion is a markedly different tone from an organization that has repeatedly claimed neutrality and avoided criticizing China over its human rights abuses.
The IOC argued Monday that “while athletes from Russia and Belarus would be able to continue to participate in sports events, many athletes from Ukraine are prevented from doing so because of the attack on their country.” It also said “with a heavy heart” that it recommended global sporting events to “not invite or allow the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials in international competitions … in order to protect the integrity of global sports competitions and for the safety of all the participants.”
The IOC also said it had withdrawn “the Olympic Order” from everyone who had “an important function” in the Russian government, including President Vladimir Putin, who received the “Gold” distinction in 2001. The organization praised Russian athletes who had called for peace and stood in “full solidarity” with Ukrainian athletes.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began just after the end of the Olympics, and it continues as the Paralympics are slated to begin in China in a few days.
The 2022 Games have been dubbed the “Genocide Olympics” by critics who believe the competition should not be held in a country responsible for a host of human rights abuses. The United States believes the Chinese Communist Party is conducting a genocide against Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in Xinjiang in western China, though China denies it. The IOC steadfastly refused to criticize China during the Olympics.
The IOC said Thursday it “strongly condemns the breach of the Olympic Truce by the Russian government.” The truce, established by a United Nations resolution, was supposed to begin a week before the Olympic Games and extend until a week after the Paralympic Games in March.
The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee also announced Monday that they would “join the International Olympic Committee & the global Olympic community in calling for a complete ban on international sport participation, effective immediately and inclusive of the Paralympic Winter Games Beijing 2022, for Russian and Belarusian athletes & officials.” They argued that “as the world watches in horror while Russia brazenly attacks the innocent people and athletes of Ukraine, this is the only acceptable action to be taken until peace has been restored.”
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The USOPC was not nearly as forceful when it came to China’s Uyghur abuses.
Sarah Hirshland, the CEO of the USOPC, said last May that “an athlete boycott of the Olympic and Paralympic Games is not the solution to geopolitical issues” and argued that “our country faced a geopolitical foe during the height of the Cold War” (the Soviet Union) and that U.S. victories over the USSR “became among the most celebrated moments in our nation’s sporting history.” She did note, however, the “oppression of the Uyghur population.”
Susanne Lyons, the chairwoman of the USOPC’s board of directors, said in January, “An athlete boycott of the Olympic and Paralympic Games is not the solution to human rights or geopolitical issues.”
IOC President Thomas Bach vowed in early February to stay “politically neutral” on China’s human rights abuses, saying that speaking up for the Uyghurs could hurt the Olympics.
“If we are taking a political standpoint, and we are getting in the middle of tensions and dispute and confrontations of political powers, then we are putting the Games at risk,” Bach said. “If, at the end, you would have Olympic Games only between national Olympic committees whose governments agree on every political situation, the Games would lose their universality, and with the universality, they would lose their mission. And that would lead to the end of the Olympic Games.”
The IOC said last month it had successfully lobbied Twitter to remove a viral clip showing a Uyghur athlete lighting the Olympic flame with commentary from NBC’s Savannah Guthrie. China’s use of a Uyghur athlete during the opening ceremony was widely seen as a political move to distract from its abuses of the Uyghurs.
IOC spokesman Mark Adams was asked whether the IOC was part of the decision-making for a Uyghur to light the cauldron and whether that met the standard of political neutrality, and he said the IOC was involved to a certain extent and the Uyghur athlete had “every right” to participate in the opening ceremony, praising it as a “lovely concept.”
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Yan Jiarong, the spokeswoman for the Beijing organizing committee, argued in mid-February that claims about Uyghur abuse were “very much based on lies.”
