China's politics — not sports — spill out during heated Olympic news conference
A MARTINEZ, HOST:
Sports and politics collided today at the Olympic Games in Beijing. During a press conference, a Chinese official lashed out about accusations of Chinese human rights abuses. NPR's Beijing correspondent Emily Feng reports.
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: The International Olympic Committee is painstakingly clear that the Games should stay politically neutral. Its rules forbid anyone, including athletes and government officials, from making political actions on Olympic premises. But Beijing Olympic Committee spokesperson Yan Jiarong seemed unable to hold herself back today at a routine daily press conference, cutting off the IOC's chief spokesman, Mark Adams.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
MARK ADAMS: Question with the gentleman here, yeah, in the blue.
YAN JIARONG: Mark, could I just make some supplementary remarks? Because this is something that we really have to take a very solemn position.
FENG: A journalist had asked about whether Taiwan's Olympic team would appear at the closing ceremony. And Yan, speaking through an interpreter, muscled in China's controversial political position that Taiwan is Chinese territory.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
YAN: (Through interpreter) What I want to say is that there is only one China in the world. Taiwan is an individable (ph) part of China.
FENG: The fireworks continued. Another journalist queried the IOC about its sportswear sponsor, China's Anta brand. Anta sources products from Xinjiang, the region where China has widely detained mostly ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs and sent some of those detained to labor in factories. So could the IOC prove its uniforms hadn't been made with forced labor?
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
YAN: Hi, Mark, although this question is raised to you and also this - the issues are irrelevant to the Winter Games, but I still feel obliged.
FENG: Again, Yan, the Chinese state official, felt obliged to jump in.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
YAN: (Through interpreter) I think these questions are very much based on lies. Some authorities that have already disputed such false information with a lot of solid evidence. You are very welcome to refer to all those evidence and the facts.
FENG: This is a line that Chinese officials have used during state press conferences to push back on copious reporting, global investigations and China's own stated policies that all show it arrested or detained hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs with no due process starting in 2017. And this time, that line got an international audience as Ms. Yan held forth on Olympic grounds, showing that despite the IOC's best efforts, sports and politics do mix, perhaps inevitably. Emily Feng, NPR News, Beijing.
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