The president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, spoke this Sunday (21) with Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai, 35, for about 30 minutes through a videoconference, according to a statement released by the Olympic organization.
The meeting comes amidst doubts about the whereabouts of the sportswoman, who earlier this month accused Zhang Gaoli, former vice-premier of China, of sexual harassment. Since then, tennis stars, as well as the president of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and the UN, have come forward seeking information about Peng.
According to the IOC, the athlete “explained that she is safe in her home in Beijing, but that she would like her privacy to be respected.” Also participating in the meeting were the president of the Athletes’ Commission, Emma Terho, and the Chinese Li Lingwei, member of the Olympic Committee.
This Saturday (20), Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of Global Times, a newspaper aligned with the Chinese Communist Party, had already published three videos on Twitter that would prove that the tennis player is alive. One of the records shows Peng at the opening ceremony of the final of a tournament that took place on Sunday morning in Beijing, local time, to try to answer questions whether the other videos, released hours earlier, were current.
Earlier, Hu released a recording of Peng having dinner “with the coach and friends at a restaurant” and shared a post from another Chinese journalist with photos of the sportswoman playing with a cat. There were no references to dates proving when the images were taken.
After the photos and videos were released, the UK Foreign Ministry issued a statement asking China to provide “verifiable evidence” of the tennis player’s safety and location.
Also in a statement, WTA President Steve Simon said he is “happy to see the videos published by the Chinese state press” but that “it is still unclear if it is free and can make decisions and act on its own without coercion or outside influence” because “video alone is insufficient”.
The Global Times, led by Hu, is published by People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. Since the harassment case was reported, neither Zhang nor any other member of the Chinese government has commented on the tennis player’s allegations. Her post was quickly deleted from the social network, as were the threads of discussion on the ultra-controlled and censored Chinese internet.
According to a screenshot of Peng’s Weibo account, a kind of Chinese Twitter, the sportswoman said that the former vie-premier, who was part of the Politburo Standing Committee, the body that represents the Communist Party’s top leadership, coerced her into doing it. sex. Afterwards, they had an intermittent consensual relationship.
In the same message, the sportswoman said she has no evidence to support her allegations. Even so, the complaint generated a strong reaction. On Thursday (18), the president of the WTA had already said that he is considering giving up sporting events in China if the accusations are not investigated.
Zhang, 75, was vice premier of China between 2013 and 2018. He was also party secretary for Shandong Province and was a member of the Politburo Standing Committee between 2012 and 2017. The tennis player, in turn, was number 1 in the ranking 2014 doubles world championship, becoming the first Chinese to reach the top of the list after winning the tournaments at Wimbledon in 2013 and Roland Garros in 2014.
For years, cases of sexual harassment and abuse were rarely publicly discussed in China. The scenario changed in 2018, when the #MeToo movement arrived in the country, after a university student accused a teacher of harassment. The episode caught the attention of NGOs, the press and other sectors.
As in the case of Peng, social networks are usually the main channel for exposing complaints, as the local press in general does not cover the topic. Even so, discussions in online spaces are not far from the eyes of the government, which watches the internet in the country. For this, a series of laws and digital blocking tools were created, as part of a policy that has been improved since the 1990s. Companies in the country’s digital market are obliged to monitor and restrict user activity, under penalty of losing the right to operate. Anyone who violates the rules can be fined and imprisoned.
Controlling the internet is part of the Communist Party’s policy, which vetoes the circulation of news and information that the government dislikes or that, in the regime’s view, create problems for society.
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