A guest on ESPN offered a ridiculous reason why he believes the United States cannot criticize China over its human rights abuses and received little push back from members of the panel he was on.
Guest J.A. Adande suggested during a segment about the Winter Olympics on Friday that the U.S. does not have the moral standing to criticize the games’ host country.
“Who are we to criticize China’s human rights record when we have ongoing attacks by agents of the state against unarmed citizens, and we’ve got assaults on the voting rights of our people of color in various states in this country,” Adande said.
He added, “So sports, I think it is possible, and it’s necessary more than ever to just shut everything out if you are to enjoy the actual games themselves.”
While the other panelist sat silent, host Tony Reali responded, “I appreciate everything you just said there.” However, he noted that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) chose China to host the games despite its human rights record and asked, “How do you view it?”
“Where can you choose that’s free?” Adande responded. “It’s very hard to find a country that isn’t problematic when it comes to human rights.”
Watch the video below:
.@jadande talks about reconciling watching the Beijing Winter Olympics amid China's human rights crisis pic.twitter.com/mqkOygjBXV
— Around the Horn (@AroundtheHorn) February 4, 2022
It is true that around the country, there are bad actors in police uniforms who have no place anywhere near a badge and a gun.
But that is very different than China detaining over 1 million Uyghurs and subjecting them to torture, forced labor, sterilization, and “re-education.”
Last year, a U.K.-based panel determined that China is carrying out a “deliberate, systematic and concerted policy” to decrease the population of the Uyghurs — and that Chinese President Xi Jinping and other top officials bear “primary responsibility for acts in Xinjiang.”
It also said that the actions China has taken against the Uyghurs amount to genocide.
Those actions are also drastically different than the second part of Adande’s comments about the “assault on voting rights.”
There is simply no comparison between a state limiting the window for requesting an absentee ballot, or the number of drop boxes, or requiring I.D. to vote, and genocide.
And if Adande’s argument sounds familiar, that may be because it is.
In March 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken called out China over human rights abuses. That led Chinese Communist Party foreign affairs chief Yang Jiechi to fire back, insisting that the U.S. “does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength.”
“The fact is that there are many problems within the United States regarding human rights, which is admitted by the U.S. itself as well. … The challenges facing the United States in human rights are deep-seated,” he added.
Finally, Adande’s latter comment that “it’s very hard to find a country that isn’t problematic” regarding human rights is simply ignorant. While no country is perfect, there are plenty of countries out there that could host the Winter Olympics that are not actively detaining a million people with a policy aimed at systematically decreasing their population.