Andrew Bolt: Olympic Committee gifts China a platform to promote evil

International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach has helped give China and its allies a powerful platform to promote evil.

The head of the Olympic movement should resign in shame after China used the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics to send the world a message: dictatorships rule.

Thomas Bach, the International Olympic Committee president, was against a diplomatic protest of the Games by top democracies, saying the event should not become a “tool to achieve political goals”. But Friday’s ceremony was the most disgustingly political at any Games, including the summer Olympics Hitler opened in Nazi Berlin in 1936.

Bach was in the audience to watch a Uighur skier light the Olympic flame in what was a blatant whitewash of China’s cultural genocide of Muslim Uighurs, up to one million of them in concentration camps.

Hitler tried a similar stunt in Berlin. He let a Jewish fencing champion win silver for Germany, while banning many other German Jews from competing, and persecuting the rest.

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping also used his opening ceremony to show off Russian President Vladimir Putin in the place of honour. The two authoritarians, both threatening war, simultaneously released a joint statement that day, attacking the West and hailing China and Russia as the real democracies.

In a statement clearly dictated by China, they announced a “trend has emerged towards redistribution of power in the world” – that is, away from America and towards China.

IOC President Thomas Bach at the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Winter Games. Picture: Getty Images)

They denounced military alliances with the US as dangerous, and said they were “seriously concerned” about Australia’s security partnership with the US and Britain, “in particular their decision to initiate co-operation in the field of nuclear-powered submarines”.

The two strongmen also declared they were against democracy movements – against “colour revolutions” – and told Western nations to stop lecturing on human rights.

The West should not “interfere in the internal affairs of other states”, and “attempts to impose their own ‘democratic standards’” was “against the spirit and true values of democracy”, which Xi and Putin laughably claimed they represented best. “Russia and China … have longstanding traditions of democracy,” they lied.

Xi and Putin also demanded support for China’s “Global Initiative on Data Security”, which would give them even more control over the internet. Frightening, and this dictators’ credo was timed to coincide with the Games, which whitewashed tyranny.

Thomas Bach, you helped to give China this platform to promote evil. Tyrants have stolen the Olympics. Resign.