At the Beijing Winter Olympics, players performing at a top level have been constantly overshadowed by incidents. This is an extremely regrettable situation. Host nation China and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) must be held accountable.
During the opening ceremony, the final pair of runners for the torch relay included an unknown female athlete identified as Uighur, an ethnic minority in China. Beijing may have wanted to show the world its ethnic harmony amid criticism of its human rights abuses in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
After the woman competed in her event, she did not speak to reporters, with only China's state media reporting her joy at running the relay. It is problematic that China's style of media control has extended even to the Olympics.
