Beijing Olympics committee declines answering questions on Taiwan and Uighur treatment
PBS NewsHourSep 09, 2021
Beijing Olympics Rep. Pushes Back on Uyghur Question
story
Image copyright: Arroyo Fernandez/NurPhoto/Shutterstock [via The Guardian]
The Facts
Yan Jiarong, Beijing Olympics spokesperson and former member of the Chinese delegation to the UN, has sparked controversy by dismissing a reporter's question about Uyghur human rights as "lies."
Jiarong's emphatic remarks are a shift from the organizers' previous approach of declining to comment on sensitive geopolitical topics.
The Spin
Anti-China narrative
The Beijing Olympics are a painful reminder to Uyghurs about the brutal repression in Xinjiang. China's policies amount to a genocide of Turkic Muslims. It's appalling that Uyghur rights weren't more prominent under the global spotlight of the Games.
Pro-China narrative
Nations with an anti-China agenda have consistently concocted misinformation about what's really happening in Xinjiang. The PRC's policies combat violent terrorism and radicalization. In fact, Beijing's efforts enjoy broad support from ethnic groups throughout the region.
Establishment-critical narrative
The US government's genocide accusation against China, made during Trump's last day in office, originates from a single source: a paper by a German right-wing religious extremist, Adrian Zenz, affiliated with shady neoconservative think tanks. A careful review of Zenz's so-called evidence hass revealed flagrant data abuse and outright fabrications.
