The Peng Shuai affair puts the IOC in front of its limits

"

" or complacency? By talking to Peng Shuai on Sunday, without demanding more guarantees on his freedom, the International Olympic Committee maneuvered a balancing act against the host country of the next Winter Olympics in February. After two weeks without news from the Chinese champion, who accused the former Deputy Prime Minister in early November of having forced her to have sex, the Lausanne authority is the first foreign organization to obtain proof that it is "

" she said on Sunday.

The IOC therefore responds "

" to the concern around the 35-year-old player born in the world of tennis to flare up in a few days until the United Nations and the White House, observes with AFP Carole Gomez, research director at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (Iris). “

, "promising a"

"

Winter Games

, warns the researcher. And from Western media to NGOs, critics were quick to rain against the Olympic body, accused of "

With the Chinese authorities to muzzle the words of Peng Shuai, thus the emergence of a Chinese #metoo.

From Belarus to Afghanistan, same struggle

"

," lamented Yaqiu Wang, China specialist at Human Rights Watch, on Twitter. For Alkan Akad, of Amnesty International, the organization "

", and should "

". Basically, the “

” claimed since last Thursday by the IOC, without publicly challenging China, is however consistent with its way of acting behind the scenes when athletes appear threatened.

The body had, for example, increased exchanges with the Belarusian Olympic Committee in the fall of 2020, after the contested re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko, before ending up sanctioning its leaders because of the persecution suffered by dissident athletes. The IOC is also active in Afghanistan, where it has orchestrated the evacuation of 300 "

" since the reconquest of the country in mid-August by the Taliban, and last week began talks in Qatar on the fate of 700. other people "

" on the spot, "

". But the case of Peng Shuai is different: “

”summarizes Jean-Loup Chappelet, specialist in Olympism at the University of Lausanne.

"It is the responsibility of the Chinese authorities to ensure a transparent investigation into the serious allegations of sexual assault made by Peng Shuai"

United Nations High Commissioner

The unease caused by his intervention on Sunday is therefore less due to the result obtained - no one did better - than to the lack of a clear position on the accusations of Peng Shuai, less than three months before the Winter Games (4- February 22, 2022) surrounded by calls for a diplomatic boycott. "

" a spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights maintained Tuesday in Geneva, formula absent from the speech of the IOC. Because the supreme sports body "

" while it still has to "

“, Thus guaranteeing the movement of thousands of people and the free work of journalists in Beijing, recalls Simon Chadwick, director of the Eurasian Sports Center at EM Lyon.

Questioned for months on its level of ethical requirement, the IOC certainly defends itself from being "

", capable of "

”.

But in a period of "

", where Western human rights indignations exasperate China and its allies, who see it as interference, the "

" claimed by the IOC is increasingly untenable. , underlines Simon Chadwick: “

” between these opposing poles.