Bearing an Olympic Torch, and a Politically Loaded Message [View all]

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ZHANGJIAKOU, China — The Uyghur athlete had been a relative unknown — a first-time Olympic Games competitor and a cross-country skier in a country not renowned for its skiing tradition. Then she was thrust into the limelight, beaming as she clutched the Olympic torch at the opening of The Games, becoming not just a symbol of China’s snow sports ambitions but also its strident defiance of Western criticism.

The lighting of the Olympic caldron is traditionally an honor given to people who symbolize the host nation, or its sporting history, or its vision of itself. China’s selection of the Uyghur athlete, Dinigeer Yilamujiang, 20, for that role, along with a teammate of the Han Chinese ethnic majority, was immediately divisive.

To many Chinese, it was a feel-good message of ethnic unity. But to human rights activists and Western critics, it looked like Beijing was using an athlete in a calculated, provocative fashion to whitewash its suppression of Uyghurs in the far western region of Xinjiang, where Yilamujiang is from.

Chinese state media declared after the ceremony that Yilamujiang had “showed the world a beautiful and progressive Xinjiang” with her “smiling face and youthful figure.” The propaganda effort was offensive to many overseas Uyghurs, who have long sought to raise awareness about China’s mass detention and re-education campaign targeting Uyghur Muslims that the United States has declared as genocidal.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/bearing-olympic-torch-politically-loaded-192147626.html