Though some are critical of the U.S.’s diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games, San Jose State experts emphasized the importance of sports activism.
Akilah R. Carter-Francique, SJSU executive director for the Institute for the Study of Sport, Society and Social Change, said politics and sports can’t be separate.
“Sport is something that has been political since its conception, particularly at Olympic Games,” Carter-Francique said. “I think the very nature of the Olympics itself is a political endeavor.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said during a Dec. 6 news conference that U.S. officials can’t dismiss the political aspect of the Olympics Games.
“U.S. diplomatic or official representation would treat these games as business as usual in the face of the PRC's [People's Republic of China] egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang," she said. "We simply can't do that.”
The Biden administration announced in the news conference a diplomatic boycott of the Olympic Games in Beijing because of the genocide led in Xinjiang, a nortwestern region of China, against Uyghurs and other predominantly-Muslim ethnic minorities in that region.
Mass detention and forced sterilization of Uyghurs organized by the Chinese government were outlined in the Xinjiang papers, which were released by the New York Times on Nov. 16, 2019.
The Associated Press reported on Dec. 7 that the Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian replied to the U.S. diplomatic boycott by accusing the U.S. of politicizing sport.
“[The Boycott] seriously violates the principle of political neutrality of sports established by the Olympic Charter and runs counter to the Olympic motto ‘more united,’ ” Zhao said.
Boycotts of the Olympic Games have already occurred several times.
According to a Feb. 6 New York Times article, the first major boycott happened during the 1976 Montreal Games.
Almost 30 countries, mostly African nations, protested against the All Blacks’, the New Zealand rugby team, tour of apartheid-era South Africa and asked for New Zealand’s exclusion from the Olmypics.
Ryan Skinnell, SJSU associate professor of rhetoric and composition, said the U.S. tried to find balance regarding the decision to exclude athletes from the boycott.
“On the one hand, the US wants to be able to say that they are taking a stand, that they're acknowledging human rights violations in China,” Skinnell said. “On the other hand, they don't want the athletes to be robbed of the chance to compete, and it's a significant part of their careers.”
The 2022 U.S. boycott doesn’t include the athletes, unlike the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games boycott led by the Carter’s Administration against the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, according to a Dec. 8, 2021 Boston University article.
Skinnell said the Biden administration tried “to thread the needle” so that they can critique China's actions regarding human rights without damaging athletes' careers
“All the world powers, at least, and many of the other countries in the world converge together [at the Olympics]. It has always been a site of really important international politics,” Skinnell said. “ If you send your top officials, then you're legitimizing the country that's holding [them].”
Skinnell focused a lot of his research on Nazi Germany, and explained how they used the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games as a propaganda platform. No countries boycotted these games.
“It's very clear, with a historical view, that the Olympics in Berlin and everybody's participation in the Olympics sort of made the Nazis seem not-as-terrible as they were,” Skinnell said. “[There were] a lot of American diplomats, and a lot of American high-ranking officials, who came back and said ‘We didn’t see anything bad, it seemed O.K. to us, Germany is doing a good job.’ ”
William Armaline, SJSU founding director of the human rights program and sociology and interdisciplinary social sciences associate professor, is more critical about the U.S.’s decision.
“It's a sort of American exceptionalism of the U.S. engagement with international law where, you know, it matters when it's convenient for us, usually in criticizing . . . our geopolitical rivals,” Armaline said in a Zoom call.
U.S. athletes were warned on Jan. 18 not to speak up about human rights issues while in China for their safety during a seminar hosted by Human Rights Watch, according to a Jan. 27 Human Rights Watch article.
Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter states that “No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”
The Olympic Charter is described on the International Olympic Committee website as “the codification of the fundamental principles of Olympism, and the rules and by-laws adopted by the International Olympic Committee.”
The Charter was first published in 1908, but the edition currently enforced is the one adopted on Aug. 8, 2021.
During the opening ceremony of the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games, more than 150 athletes, academics and advocates signed an open letter published on the Muhammad Ali Center website urging the International Olympic Committee to amend rule 50. Carter-Francique also signed the letter.
“The athletes need to have an opportunity to share [their] voice because there’s been real hardships and things that are going on in their respective country,” Carter-Francique said. “This is an opportunity for them to share that and spread that message on that platform, on that global stage.”
SJSU alumni Tommie Smith and John Carlos protested at the Mexico City 1968 Olympic games. The Olympic Black Power statue located behind Robert D. Clark Hall immortalizes the moment the two young men who stood atop the winner’s podium during the national anthem, fists raised in the air, in a gesture that means solidarity with the Black struggle for civil rights.
The two African-American athletes and SJSU alumni drew global attention to the racism endured by Black people in the U.S.
The International Olympic Committee President at that time ordered Smith’s and Carlos’s suspension from the U.S. team and the Olympic village according to a March 30, 2021 interview with Carlos published by The Guardian.
51 years later, Smith and Carlos were inducted into the Paralympic and Olympic Hall of Fame in late 2019, according to a Sept. 23, 2019 Washington Post article.
Armaline said it’s not the International Olympic Committee's role to decide what athletes can or can’t say, though activism is even more powerful when it’s an act of resistance.
“Often, things are more meaningful when you're doing them to break the rules,” Armaline said. “That's the meaning of resistance, right? They should resist those rules, and express themselves in ways they see fit. Now, those come along with risks, as political activism always does.”
