Games can’t hide China’s abuses

On the eve of the Winter Olympics, nothing shows up Beijing’s unrelenting abuse of basic human rights more than the continued incarceration of Chinese-born Australian writer Yang Hengjun. Thursday is the 1098th day since he was seized on a trip to visit his sick mother. Since then, he has endured more than 300 interrogation sessions aimed at forcing him to confess to espionage, which he denies emphatically.

Last May, a closed “trial” was held in one of the communist regime’s courts. The outcome remains unknown. As Foreign Minister Marise Payne said in sounding the alarm about Dr Yang’s deteriorating health, neither he nor the Australian government has been given details of the charges against him. Dr Yang says he has been tortured. His friends fear his health is deteriorating and that he could die in jail. His treatment is gross misconduct, even by a government with a record of mobster-style hostage-taking, as in the 2018 imprisonment of two Canadians. That led to Ottawa’s agreeing in September to the release of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.

For all that, Beijing struts its stuff as one of 47 nations comprising the UN Human Rights Council, which purports to be the world’s premier human rights body. China’s Winter Games propaganda is suffused with bogus claims of global citizenship and decency. “Olympism”, it trumpets, exalts “respect for universal fundamental ethical principles”. The Games slogan “Together for a Shared Future”, China claims, is about “a shared future for humankind … and working towards a better tomorrow, especially given the difficulties faced through Covid’’. Really?

Dr Yang’s incarceration shows a different narrative would be more fitting. So does the case of Australian journalist Cheng Lei, who was detained in Beijing weeks after ASIO raided Chinese state media employees in Sydney. Likewise the continuing uncertainty surrounding Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, who alleged and later appeared to retract sexual abuse by a henchman of President Xi Jinping. Top players Naomi Osaka and Garbine Muguruza have raised concerns about her at the Australian Open.

Another example of the CCP’s disregard for human rights emerged on Monday when dissident Guo Feixiong was arrested in China after he requested permission to go to the US to care for his young children after his wife died while receiving cancer treatment. The “diplomatic boycott” of the Winter Games is the least democracies can do to express disdain for such blatant abuses.