Debates, Debate | It is impossible to separate the Olympics and politics

Posted On: July 6, 2022

Administrator He’s a boss. The leader expresses the attitude of the newspaper.

Simultaneous While the images of the Beijing Olympics arrive at his home in the many living rooms of the world, the mayor of Lillehammer is criticized for having received this weekend representatives from the Chinese Embassy to celebrate the Beijing Olympics and the Chinese New Year .

The discussion is whether a municipality, or even a country, should boycott a regime that Norway does not support.

Several countries such as the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Denmark do not send any official representatives to the Beijing Olympics. Norway did not want to participate in the diplomatic boycott and is sending ministers to China. The sports chairman says sport and politics should not be mixed.

The Olympic Games should be fundamentally about sport and be about fellowship across borders. The glorification of the Olympic Games does everything to bring it to life at the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which is impossible to separate high-level sport and politics. The Olympics are big politics.

China is not the first country to use the Olympics to whitewash a reprehensible regime. Vladimir Putin turned the 2014 Olympics in Sochi into a show of strength.

It’s far from the Olympics in Sochi or Beijing at the Lillehammer Olympics in 1994. Although the idea of fraternization is good, it is appropriate to ask oneself if the distance is not too great to be able to influence it.

Dialogue is an important tool for creating peace and counteracting conflict. Just as French Baron Pierre De Coubertin meant when he founded the current Olympics in 1894. 130 years later, however, the Olympics emerge as a tool for authoritarian states to cover up human rights abuses. of man.

Although Lillehammer is only a small piece in the big game of power, the municipality has a responsibility. Both as a former Olympic city, possible future candidate and host city of the World Expression Forum.

The rapporteur followed the government line and received around 100 Chinese delegations. Inviting or traveling to Beijing involves responsibility. It is our responsibility to recognize that high level sport and politics are inseparable.