The athletes wouldn’t dare take a knee — not in China. There would be no fists raised toward Xi Jingping or Vladimir Putin in the skybox, what with endorsements on the line. But young activists had briefed more than two-dozen members of Team USA in the run-up to the Winter Olympics, including selfie diplomacy at a ski lodge with Shaun White and the Tibetan flag. Last Friday night, then, the delegations marched into Beijing’s arena of agitprop, and the rebels stayed behind the scenes.
A band of Olympians across multiple nations privately boycotted last week’s Opening Ceremony, Rolling Stone has learned, and a gold medalist is said to be preparing a public rebuke of China’s human-rights abuse after the Games. Afraid that Beijing organizers who’ve already threatened “certain punishment” of athlete speech might surveil them, many delegates have dialed back communication from inside the Chinese “closed loop” — a bottleneck for viral infection and freedom of expression alike. Activists received early indications from Olympians and those close to them that at least 15 competitors intended to skip the opening-night spectacle in defiance of China, and a broadcast analysis helps to substantiate their absence.
These previously unreported demonstrations at the 2022 Beijing Games have been silent ones, so far; during a time of diplomatic boycott, politicians warn that Olympians face real danger as their countries’ de-facto ambassadors inside hostile territory. Indeed, activist athletes have been drowned out by the host nation’s candy-coated authoritarianism — a token member of an oppressed ethnic minority picked to light the torch, a disappeared tennis star planted to cheer on an American skier winning gold for Team China — then sunken by complicit sponsors and suppressed by the Olympics’ governing body.
But a low-key protest movement is bubbling up, and interviews from the Olympic Villages — combined with increased scrutiny from Washington, D.C. plus internal Team USA communications obtained by RS — reveal an American-led standoff with China and the International Olympic Committee for the soul of the Games.
“Those athletes that are skipping Opening Ceremonies, I am proud of them,” Rep. James McGovern, who co-chairs the Congressional commission monitoring China, tells Rolling Stone when informed of the secret athlete boycotts. “But there aren’t enough negative words in the dictionary to adequately describe my feelings for the IOC for putting these athletes in this situation. They knew when they decided to locate the Olympics in Beijing that China had a horrific human-rights record — and yet they …….
Source: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/beijing-olympics-protest-team-usa-1298746/