International Olympic Committee's silence over Uyghur atrocities shows China's control through fear: Report

Washington [US], April 16 : China controls the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Olympic sponsors in the same way it governs its citizens, which is through fear as the international Olympic body continues to remain silent on the atrocities of the Uyghur community by the hands of the Chinese Communist Party, according to a sports author.
Sally Jenkins, an author and a sports columnist, in her article for The Washington Post, referred to China as 'anaconda in the chandelier' and called it "the most apt description ever written of how Beijing's leaders insinuate their power on others."
"It used to be that China policed or coerced only its own citizens, induced them into self-censorship and paralysis with this sense of latent but chilling threat. But lately, the fat, vague menace somehow has frozen the entire Western world," the scribe wrote.
"The repressions are subtle at first. You make a small but compromised agreement in the name of commerce or diplomacy or Olympic "engagement" with China. Once in the room, you realize that massive, suffocating constrictor of a snake is coiled overhead, ready to choke the life out of you or your business if you offend. People consequently move very, very gingerly," Jenkins wrote.
"Everyone engaged with Beijing seems afraid to move a muscle -- stifled, unfree, hunch-shouldered and inert -- for fear that the 'snake' might move. The IOC and its corporate partners are silent and immobilized to the point of abetting slavery, torture and rape in the Uyghur camps of Xinjiang, They're facilitating a dangerously aggressive encroachment of the anaconda to our own doorsteps.," she added.
The author further said that Beijing's leaders want to "police you, whether you know it or not."
She further wrote for The Washington Post that Chinese President Xi Jinping is on a concerted campaign to "transnationalise his autocracy, to undermine the United Nations human rights code and enforce a worldwide gag order over his murderous forced-labour club-whacking despotism which he very much would like to take into Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean."
She said Western bloc countries and companies that dominate Olympic medal counts have more than enough time to force the IOC to withdraw from Beijing and called on them to hold a "replacement winter games" in Canada.
"They should break the IOC's autocratic handshake and organize a replacement Winter Games in Canada. There would be nothing feckless about such an act. On the contrary, it would be an act of powerful reclamation and self-determination," she added.
In February, a coalition of 180 human rights groups has urged governments around the world to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympic Games slated for next year due to China's reported human rights abuses towards minorities.
Beijing has vehemently denied that it is engaged in human rights abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang while reports from journalists, NGOs and former detainees have surfaced, highlighting the Chinese Communist Party's brutal crackdown on the ethnic community.