The Olympic rings as Biathletes skate above the rings in a practice run on Thu Feb 3, 2022 at Zhangjiakou, China (AP News photo)

Beijing Winter Olympics – US Athletes the Most Watched, by the Chinese Government–

That’s Amaury News and Commentary

By Amaury Pi-González

The FBI warned the US Athletes participating in Beijing to take temporary cell phones (burner phones) and leaving their regular phones at home, because of the Chinese government surveillance, possible cyber attacks and other uses of their personal information for malicious intent.

The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, told the US Athletes against angering the “ruthless” Chinese government and to focus on competing in the games rather than speaking out. In other words “shut up and just compete”.

The US boycotted diplomatically these games, together with other nations. What this means is that no US dignitaries will be in attendance at Beijing for the Opening Ceremonies, no politicians and diplomats.

The United Nations and Amnesty International, as well as other worldwide organization in the free world accuse the communist government of China of human rights violations, especially of forced labor camps across China of Uyghurs, a much persecuted Muslim minority as well as Tibetan populations in that country and other types of abuses including torture and even death.

Recently famous Chinese Tennis star Peng Shuai spoke about being raped by a high Chinese government official. She was “missing” for days after her allegations, to this day many do not really know what is happening with Shuai. Although the Chinese government is expected to use her as propaganda during the games that just began.

Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter has been consistently critical of the human rights abuses in China and even criticized the NBA for doing business with that country. There will be no public allowed for all events. This is basically a televised Olympic with very strict regulatory policies for all the athletes.

These Winter Olympics are called by many around the free world “The Genocide Olympics” as the tensions will be high, as Russian leader Vladimir Putin, threatening an invasion of Ukraine will be attending as a special invite of his friend and ally Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, the man in charge of China’s over 1.4 billion people.

Chinese laws are very vague on the crimes they can use to prosecute people’s free speech. The free speech in China is allowed speech as long as that speech is favorable to the government. Nothing remotely close to the laws of the United States.

The athletes attending from all over the world will be very much in lock-down inside their quarters, because of strict covid precautions and also because the communist always consider every visitor to their country a “potential spy”. Although that is not right, their system of government, like other communist countries live with that paranoia all the time.

Because the Olympics always have the potential for international conflict, the US delegation must be very discipline. We can only think like the stress of competition was not enough, they have to deal also with these other stressful situations which are more political than anything else.

The US delegation has 225 athletes, 115 men and 109 women plus one (1) non-binary athlete. There are 91 countries participating in these 2022 Winter Olympics.

NBC is the official carrier for the United States and CCTV for China, a country with an estimated 370 million televisions among their population. 200 countries around the world will have some kind of coverage.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez does News and Commentary weekly at http://www.sportsradioservice.com