Please read a rough English translation below.
A few dozen readers have already asked, normally I would have reported back from the Olympic Games long ago. At most of the winter and summer games I've covered so far, thirteen times in all, I started covering exactly one week before the opening ceremonies.
I would like to outline to you today why I did not fly to Beijing, to the genocide and propaganda games of the CCP and IOC.
I refrain from using the term boycott, that would be an exaggeration. It may be that my decision has boycott-like traits, I think you can put it that way without lying. But I don't want to focus on that.
The accreditation card, which also counts as a visa in China, has been lying on our desk for a few weeks. For the sake of completeness, as so often:
COVID played a role in my considerations, but not the decisive one. I have behaved carefully and appropriately for two years, only flown once (to the summer games in Tokyo), have not left the Berlin area a dozen times, quite consciously, and of course I have been vaccinated three times - and know, like all of you, that that is not a shield. That's all you can do, but the fear of infection was irrelevant to my rejection.
A thousand times more important:
COVID minimized freedom of movement and thus also journalistic freedom on site.
Under the guise of COVID, a thousand things are being tightened up and adjusted at will in China, just as the head of state and party leader Xi Jinping, winner of the Olympic Order of the IOC, and his business partners from Lausanne like it. Of course, freedom of the press is not guaranteed there, let's not kid ourselves and don't believe the eternal propaganda messages that the IOC trumpets out into the world.
Although Thomas Bach is not just a German IOC President, but Bach's faithful servant Christian Klaue, who is usually too cowardly to give his name, acts as propaganda director and thus the supreme forger of the truth. That is why in many texts about the IOC you will only find the phrase "explained by an IOC spokesman". Shame on you! Be ashamed of your work and the traces you leave behind. The time for excuses and apologies is over.
I'm not a fan of uncritically circulating every press release from Human Rights Watch and other NGOs and calling it journalism. Still, I recommend the publications of Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, and others on the subject of press freedom at the Winter Olympics.
I don't trust either the Chinese doping controls or the Chinese COVID controls. I am convinced that there is manipulation everywhere, as is so often the case in this global Olympic theatre. It's crazy what's going on there. A shame.
And finally: COVID has increased travel costs enormously and increased the entrepreneurial risk. At the beginning of January, when I wasn't quite at peace with myself and had always looked for flights at the same time, I could have gotten a direct flight VIE - PEK for around 3,500 euros. economy class. Perhaps not everyone will know: China closed its airports two years ago and only allows a few flights from abroad. If you like, you can look at a few details about the conditions, requirements and restrictions (also mentioning the issue of flights) in the Playbook for Broadcasters, International Federations, Marketing Partners, Olympic and Paralympic Family, Press, Workforce that applies to me. As expected, I had to cancel my self-booked hotel and would have had to check into a more expensive, worse and even better monitored facility - within the closed-loop system.
Xi Jinping and his Olympic minions like it. Under the COVID guise, it's even better to arrange, trick, lie, spy, control, propagate, cheat and screw.
I've been to China often enough.
In short: I've tried what you can do as a journalist. That is not much. I call it: doing homework.
Do you want to support investigative journalism and Olympic education?SPORT & POLITICS Shop. Subscribe to my Olympic newsletter: via Mailchimp and Revue. Read about my decision to skip the trip to the Beijing Propaganda and Genocide Games.
In the search for one of the most important texts for me, which I wrote in 2008 for a SPIEGEL special about the IOC and Beijing and which I will be post-publishing in its entirety these days, I just came to the conclusion that I also wrote for SPIEGEL in 2008 at the end of the summer games in Beijing. Briefly a few passages from it, it is not difficult to guess that we only have to exchange names and numbers and can also re-publish such sentences in a few days - and are guaranteed to read almost word for word in other media and journalists:
Human rights, doping, media censorship at the games in Beijing: IOC President Jacques Rogge took it sporty. At his final press conference, he defended China's crackdown on demonstrators - presenting himself as the regime's puppet. "There is no doubt that we made the right decision with Beijing," said Rogge. “The IOC and the Olympics cannot change sovereign states and cannot cure all diseases in the world. But we can contribute to positive change. And so do we.” Roaring applause. In principle, nothing has changed in the constellation for years. It was like this before Beijing, during the games and will be like this in the future: the IOC claims the status of a non-political organization. It is clearly profit-oriented, but enjoys the status of an association under Swiss law and thus also numerous tax advantages. The IOC always acts politically when it serves to maximize profits. However, when the IOC is reminded of its political and moral responsibility by human rights activists, NGOs and politicians, it reacts offended and increasingly helpless. External interference is forbidden. control too. You only want to assume responsibility every two years at the sixteen-day summer and winter games. And even then only partially, closely related to the Olympic venues. This is the fundamental conflict that the Olympic Games in Beijing exacerbated extremely. Rogge said two weeks ago that the "magic of the Games" would silence criticism. He trusted the Chinese to provide perfect conditions for TV broadcasts in mega sports venues in front of handpicked audiences, supported by an army of security officials and half a million volunteers. The IOC and the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China only got it on one thing: on the power of images. On television, which breaks down all the dramas into their individual parts, processed again and again using the most modern technical means, with super slow motion, exciting camera perspectives, backed with the right sound. This is how heroic epics are created. One only has to look at the latest promotional clips for the newly launched PR campaign "The Best of Us", in which the super athletes are stopped in the stadiums: "Amazes us!" It was about nothing else in these test-tube games. It's never about anything else. Rogge has defended the Chinese and the IOC's decision on Beijing for seven years, to the point of self-denial. He let the CP leaders around Hu Jintao lead him through the arena by the nose ring. There was no turning back. He first promised free internet access for Olympic reporters, then declined to apologize for breaking his promise. He allowed the daily joint press conferences of the IOC and the organizing committee to become a farce and only take place occasionally.
See you again.
A lot has been going through my head in the past few weeks. My whole life. I grew up behind a wall and enjoyed the full, questionable socialist education program. In the process of isolation there were three important elements for me in 1989: the electoral fraud in the local elections in the GDR in 1989, then shortly afterwards reading Rolf Henrich's book The Guardianship State - and the discussions about the Tiananmen massacre. Some may not be able to follow me now, nor do they have to. You know how it is, some things you can't get out of your head. It's formative.
I just don't want to get into this bubble of Xi and Bach.
I don't want to be cooped up inside this Olympic COVID wall. It disgusts me.
The memory of this incident with a Chinese secret service henchman disguised as a journalist also disgusts me:
(I had officially complained to the IOC at the time. It happened in the IOC flophouse Lausanne Palace. No reaction. Oh yes: just a stupid grin.)
Last point, also important for my final decision, which took a long time to mature, although somehow I still wanted to leave a back door open, for many reasons, certainly also out of vanity, because I would like to always be there and try everything:
After the death of my friend Andrew Jennings, I spent two and a half weeks thinking about journalism day and night, digging through my memories and going through so many stations in my journalistic life and our work together - by Andrew and many others , please read all this, something special has been created: SPORT & POLITICS, The Andrew Jennings Edition) - that I soon realized how unimportant it is whether I ever do my kind of Olympic reporting under more or less complicated conditions somewhere on this planet.
I can produce a lot of sensible things from my desk during this time. I have projects to work on (e-books and magazines) and to serve my loyal clientele. I will continue to do my homework and be productive. I will bring you an Olympics newsletter, probably daily, which will be more of a digest than Tokyo, with many certainly good recommendations of the work of colleagues and friends in China - and hopefully some sensible thoughts and analysis from me.
I will.
I made my decision. Others have thought about it just as carefully and made different decisions. I don't blame anyone for other decisions.
I know that some colleagues from the closed-loop system of the CCP and IOC will also work very hard to provide very important and helpful notes, thoughts and descriptions that will help us all to organize this event that should not have taken place there. to classify better.
About everyone else who is concentrating on the medal hunt under the most absurd conditions and under the total control of Xi Jinping's henchmen, who will then certainly apologetically add "but we also report critically", which is a few minutes of hundreds of hours of airtime are meant, I don't want to go into more detail about all these others. The coming weeks will certainly offer opportunities here and there for this. Some things cannot be left uncommented. Perhaps I will revive the Sochi Olympic Poems.
Best regards! Stay curious!
Why I don't cover the Propaganda Games in Beijing. Why I stay away from the Genocide Games.
Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends and enemies!
Normally, for most of the Winter and Summer Games I have covered so far, thirteen times in total, I started my coverage exactly one week before the Opening Ceremony. Today I would like to outline why I did not fly to Beijing, to the Genocide and Propaganda Games of CCP and IOC.
I refrain from using the term boycott, that would be an exaggeration. It may be that my decision has boycott-like features, I think you can put it that way without lying. But I don't want to put that in the foreground.
COVID played a role in my considerations, but not the decisive one. I have behaved cautiously and appropriately for two years, have only flown once (to Tokyo for the Summer Olympics), have not left the Berlin environs a dozen times, quite deliberately, and am of course vaccinated three times – and know, as you all do, that this is not a protective shield. That's all you can do, but fear of infection was irrelevant to my refusal.
A thousand times more important: COVID minimized freedom of movement and thus press freedom on the ground.
Under the guise of COVID, a thousand things are tightened up and arbitrarily adapted in China, just as it suits the state and party leader Xi Jinping, holder of the Olympic Order of the IOC, and his business partners from Lausanne. Of course, freedom of the press is not guaranteed there, so let's not fool ourselves and believe the eternal propaganda messages that the IOC trumpets to the world. Whereby not only a German is IOC president, but Bach's loyal servant Christian Klaue acts as propaganda director and thus supreme truth faker, who is usually too cowardly to give his name. That is why in many articles about the IOC you only find the phrase “declared an IOC spokesman”. Shame on you! Shame on you for your work and the traces you leave behind. The time for excuses and apologies is over.
I am not a fan of uncritically distributing every press release from Human Rights Watch and other NGOs and calling it journalism. Nevertheless, on the subject of press freedom at the Winter Olympics, I recommend the publications of Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and others.
I trust neither the Chinese doping nor the Chinese COVID controls. I am convinced that there is manipulation at all points, as so often in this global Olympic theatre. It is insanity what is going on there. A disgrace.
And finally: COVID made travel costs hugely more expensive and increased the entrepreneurial risk. At the beginning of January, when I was still not completely at peace with myself and had been looking for flights at the same time, I could have got a direct flight VIE – PEK for around 3,500 euros. Tourist class. Perhaps not everyone will know: China virtually closed the airports two years ago and only allows a few flights from abroad. If you like, you can read a few details about the conditions, requirements and restrictions (the question of flights is also mentioned in it) in the playbook for “Broadcasters, International Federations, Marketing Partners, Olympic and Paralympic Family, Press, Workforce” that applies to me. As expected, I had to cancel my self-booked hotel and would have had to check into a more expensive, worse and even better monitored facility – within the “closed-loop system”.
Xi Jinping and his Olympic minions like that. It is even easier to arrange, trick, lie, spy, control, propagandise, cheat and screw under the COVID cover.
I have been to China often enough. Before the 2008 Summer Games, at the Beijing Games and afterwards. I witnessed the fear and chaos in the Olympic Circuit that prevailed on the Tibet crisis, the all-dominant topic at the 2008 ANOC meeting in Beijing. I described Beijing's Olympic bid for 2000 back in 1993 and was in Monaco when Sydney – in the guise of Bach's buddy John Coates – bribed two (more) IOC members with so-called cooperation agreements the night before the election to defeat Beijing (it succeeded by 45 votes to 43). I was in 2001 Moscow when Beijing finally became the 2008 Olympic city at the request of Juan Antonio Samaranch Sr. and Samaranch Jr. was hoisted into the IOC. I organized a journalists' workshop on the Olympics in China in 2008. I was in Kuala Lumpur in 2015 when Beijing became the 2022 Olympic city under dubious circumstances. I went for a walk with Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr, who is central to Beijing 2022, at the last Winter Games and talked about Beijing there too. I asked Thomas Bach in 2019 about his stance on concentration camps for the Uyghurs (yes, I used the term concentration camps and he surprisingly did not object). In short, what one can do as a journalist, I tried. It's not much. I call it doing homework.
While searching for one of the most important texts I ever wrote, which I wrote in 2008 for a SPIEGEL special on the IOC and Beijing and which I will republish in its entirety these days, I just found a conclusion that I had also written for SPIEGEL in 2008 at the end of the Summer Games in Beijing. A few passages from it, it's not hard to guess that we only have to exchange names and numbers and that we will be able to re-publish such sentences in a few days – and I guarantee that we will read them almost word for word in other media and journalists:
Human rights, doping, media censorship at the Beijing Games: IOC President Jacques Rogge took it sportingly. At his final press conference, he defended China's crackdown on protesters - presenting himself as a puppet of the regime.
"There is no doubt that we made the right decision with Beijing," Rogge said. “The IOC and the Olympic Games cannot change sovereign states and cannot cure all the ills of this world. But we can contribute to positive change. And that is what we are doing.” Sputtering applause.
In principle, nothing has changed in the constellation for years. It was like this before Beijing, during the Games and will be like this in the future: The IOC claims for itself the status of a non-political organisation. It is clearly profit-oriented, but under Swiss law it enjoys the status of an association and thus numerous tax advantages. The IOC always acts politically when it serves to maximize profit.
However, when the IOC is reminded of its political and moral responsibility by human rights activists, NGOs and politicians, it reacts in an offended and increasingly helpless manner. External interference is forbidden. Control, too. Responsibility is only accepted every two years during the summer and winter games, each lasting sixteen days. And even then only partially, closely related to the Olympic venues. This is the fundamental conflict that the Beijing Olympics have exacerbated.
Rogge said a fortnight ago that the “magic of the games” would silence criticism. He has trusted the Chinese to deliver perfect conditions for the TV broadcasts in mega sports venues in front of hand-picked audiences, backed by an army of security guards and half a million volunteers.
The IOC and the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China were only interested in one thing: the power of images. On television, which breaks down all the dramas into their individual parts, prepared over and over again with the most modern technical means, with super slow motion, exciting camera perspectives, underpinned with the appropriate sound.
This is how heroic epics are created. One only has to look at the latest advertising clips for the freshly launched PR campaign “The Best of Us”, in which the super athletes are stopped in the stadiums: “Amaze us!” It was about nothing else at these retort games. It is never about anything else.
Rogge has defended the Chinese and the IOC decision for Beijing for seven years, to the point of self-denial. He let the CP leaders around Hu Jintao lead him through the ring by the nose. There was no turning back. He first promised free internet access for Olympic reporters, then refused to apologize for his broken promise. He allowed what should have been daily joint press conferences between the IOC and the organizing committee to become a farce and only take place occasionally.
On re-submission.
Many things have been going through my mind in the past few weeks. My whole life. After all, I grew up behind a wall, the iron curtain, and enjoyed the full questionable socialist education programme. There were at least three important elements for me in the process of disengagement in 1989: the electoral fraud in the local elections in the GDR in 1989, then shortly afterwards the reading of Rolf Henrich's book The Guardianship State – and the discussions surrounding the Tian'anmen massacre. Some people may not be able to follow me now, but they don't have to. You know how it is, you can't get some things out of your head.
It is formative.
I just don't want to get into this bubble shaped by Xi and Bach, I don't want to be crammed into this COVID Olympic Wall. It disgusts me.
I am also disgusted by the memory of this incident (and many other similar incidents) with a Chinese intelligence agent disguised as a journalist:
(I had officially complained to the IOC at the time. It happened at the IOC’s Lausanne Palace. No reaction. Just stupid grins).
Last point, also important for my final decision, which matured for a long time, whereby I somehow still wanted to leave myself a back door open, for many reasons, certainly also for vanity, because I always want to be there too and try everything:
After the death of my friend Andrew Jennings, I spent two and a half weeks day and night thinking so intensely about journalism, reminiscing so intensely and retracing all the stages of my journalistic life and our work together (Andrew and many others, please look it all up, something special has emerged: SPORT & POLITICS, The Andrew Jennings Edition) that I soon realized how unimportant it is whether I once more or less pull off my kind of Olympic coverage under complicated conditions somewhere on this planet.
I can produce many sensitive things from my desk during this time. I have projects to work on (e-books and magazines) and my loyal clientele to serve.
I will continue to do my homework and be productive. I will provide you with an Olympic newsletter, probably daily, which will be more of a digest than it was in Tokyo, with many certainly good recommendations of the work of colleagues and friends from China – and hopefully some sensitive thoughts and analysis from me.
That's what I'm going to do.
I have decided so. Others have thought it through just as thoroughly and decided otherwise. I do not hold other decisions against anyone. I know that some colleagues, even from the closed-loop system of CCP and IOC, will, with great effort, provide very important and helpful notes, thoughts and descriptions that will help us all to better frame this event that should not have taken place there. I don't want to dwell on all the others who will focus on the medal hunt under the most absurd conditions and under the total control of Xi Jinping's henchmen, who will then certainly again apologetically add “but we also report critically”, by which a few minutes of hundreds of hours of broadcasting time are meant about all these others. The coming weeks will certainly offer opportunities here and there. Some things cannot be left uncommented. Perhaps I will revive the Olympic Poems I have produced during the disgraced Sochi Olympics.
Best regards! Stay curious!
Jens Weinreich
