"China’s government is showing how it feels about international condemnation of its human rights abuses.
During the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, China made a particularly brazen decision to choose an Uyghur athlete to deliver the ceremonial flame, which NBC News notes “often carries symbolic weight based in part on who is selected for the task.”
“This was a riposte to President Joe Biden for skipping these Olympics,” Andy Browne, editorial director of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum said during NBC’s broadcast, adding that it was “a message to the West: China won’t be lectured to on human rights, or on any other issue.”
NBC’s Savannah Guthrie noted, “This moment is quite provocative, it’s a statement from the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, to choose an athlete from the Uyghur minority, it is an in your face response to those Western nations including the U.S., who have called this Chinese treatment of that group genocide…there will be much discussion about this.”
CNN’s Jake Tapper weighed in on China’s move on Twitter, “Hard to imagine a more cynical move. The Chinese government is literally committing genocide simultaneously against the Uyghurs.”
No comments:
Post a Comment