China: Genocide

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise if it looked as though I was not in my place for the opening speech of my noble friend Lord Alton. I was merely sitting in a different place. I draw noble Lords’ attention to my register of interests in sport and physical activity, which are quite wide.

I thank my noble friend Lord Alton for his continued persistence in bringing the plight of the Uighurs to the attention of your Lordships’ House and beyond. I also thank the number of organisations which have been in touch. If anyone has not read it, I recommend looking at the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China report, which is harrowing and educational. The Coalition for Genocide Response has also spoken; I agree that the word “genocide” should not be used lightly, but we have only to look back to the situation in Rwanda to see how long it took the international community to decide whether it was civil unrest or genocide. I applaud Liz Truss for speaking out on what is happening right now in China.

I have previously spoken on organ harvesting. My noble friend Lady Finlay covered this extensively. We must learn from previous conflicts and decide as a country where we want to draw the line. At what point does the international community step in? It will come as no surprise that I will use this debate to talk about soft politics and the use of sport as a tool for change, not least because the Winter Olympics and Paralympics are happening in just a couple of months’ time.

Back in 2000, Nelson Mandela said:

“Sport has the power to change the world”.


Sport has an amazing power to pull people together, and my own life experience and that of other Members of your Lordships’ House can attest to this. London 2012 was an amazing Games but limited in what it can do because it is a moment in time—quite like the Olympic Truce, which the noble Lord, Lord Bates, has worked on extensively. He should be commended for this. All the truce asks is that, during the Olympics, countries try not to kill each other. What about the rest of the time in between those Games every two years? We cannot allow the Olympics and Paralympics to be about tick-box compliance without other things stepping in place to bring about change.

We should never pretend that sport and politics are not inextricably linked. There is more politics in sport than in politics. Until a few days ago, I was going to make some relatively simple comments on the responsibility of the international sporting community and the decisions to award major sporting events to countries with poor human rights records, but we have seen in recent days just how difficult the relationship between sport and politics can be.

Interestingly, in recent times we have discussed the ability of athletes to use their platform to bring about change, and there have been some incredible examples of this. Some of our own UK sporting bodies are now proactively discussing this and allowing athletes to use their platform. However, the reality is that the public like athletes using their platform only for subjects they agree with, and it is wrong to say that every athlete, regardless of their net worth or fame, has the ability to use their platform, or even necessarily wants to.

But we have seen what happens when an athlete uses their platform. We only need to look at the example of Peng Shuai, the Chinese tennis player. Today, the foreign ministry in Beijing has accused unnamed people of “malicious hyping” in this case, as reported in the Guardian this morning. The Guardian goes on to quote Ho Pin, an exiled Chinese publisher in New York, who said that:

“The Peng Shuai saga could happen in any country and in any system”.


We know that it does, but this is happening right now in a country where the Games will take place in a couple of months’ time.

The role of sport and politics is, as I have said, inextricably linked. The medal table is a form of politics, and countries pride themselves on where they finish. We do this; I have celebrated Great Britain for where we have finished on the medal table. The noble Lord, Lord Coe, has asked my friend in sport, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, about athletes boycotting the Games, and they are able to speak on this from a personal perspective. But asking athletes on their own to boycott is not the answer; the medals just get divided up between the countries that are there. Could the Minister have a conversation with DCMS about the athletes who choose to boycott the Games? How will they be supported for taking a moral and personal stance?

I worked in Beijing, I have worked on the Games, and I have worked with sponsors of the Games. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, asked a very important question. We can all think about what we can do differently to bring about change. Professor Simon Chadwick has written some really powerful articles on social media about sport and politics, and the journalist Matthew Syed has written very powerfully on this as well.

But we also have to be honest about the Games. The IOC, IPC, FIFA and other big sporting organisations need countries who can afford to pay for the Games. There are fewer and fewer countries that can afford to do so, and these countries can have human rights records that we do not celebrate, recognise or support. We have just seen the change to the way in which the Games are awarded from the traditional seven years out, to give countries a longer lead-in, because some are not able to step in in the same way.

This is not just about the international federations. What about the role of sponsors or spectators? We can all play a role in bringing about change. I have to say that a video call between the IOC president, Thomas Bach, and Peng Shuai is not enough to assure us of her safety. We have to ask questions about the closure of the UN Office on Sport for Development and Peace. The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China has asked the BOA to look at the relationship between the IOC and Chinese officials, but I would argue that it does not have the capacity or the skills to do that.

I turn to the diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Games. Jacob Rees-Mogg has very recently said that the door is open on that, and that currently no flights have been booked for government Ministers. That is one step in a moment in time, but sportswashing is a really serious issue. We all have to do more to ensure that sport is used for all the things it is good for and not to sportswash and allow inappropriate regimes to hold up the appalling way they treat their populations, including the Uighurs and beyond.

Finally, I thank my noble friend Lord Alton for all he does to keep going with this really important debate.