New Delhi: India announced a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing after a commander involved in 2020 border clashes between the two countries appeared as an Olympic torchbearer in the customary torch relay leading up to the Games.
Following the official move, India’s public broadcaster Doordarshan also announced it will not telecast the opening and closing ceremonies live. The country has one athlete competing this year, alpine skier Arif Khan.
The decisions were sparked after images showed People’s Liberation Army commander Qi Fabao honored as one of the some 1,200 people to bear the Olympic torch as it moves across the Olympic competition zones in the lead-up to the lighting of the Olympic cauldron Friday evening. Chinese basketball superstar and former NBA player Yao Ming and astronaut Jing Haipeng were among other honorees to carry the flame alongside Qi on the relay’s opening day Wednesday.
Qi has been hailed a hero in China for his role fighting in the deadly 2020 India-China skirmish at a disputed border in the Himalayan region that left at least 20 Indian soldiers dead. China has said the People’s Liberation Army lost four soldiers.
The skirmish saw soldiers on both sides battling with sticks, stones and nail-studded bamboo poles in what was the deadliest border clash between the two nuclear-armed neighbors in more than 40 years. Both sides have accused the other of overstepping the de facto border, the Line of Actual Control (LAC) that runs along the western sector of the Galwan Valley.
The inclusion of Qi, who sustained a head wound during the fighting, sparked backlash in India for bringing fraught politics between the two nations into what is meant to be a “peaceful competition” among nations.
Prominent Chinese commentator Hu Xijin, former editor of the nationalist state-owned tabloid the Global Times, hit back on the Indian reaction, writing on Twitter of Qi’s participation: “What I saw from it was a call for China-India border peace and call for world peace. What’s wrong with this?”
India’s move further shortens the already truncated list of foreign diplomatic guests expected at the Games — which also marks Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s first time welcoming counterparts to China in well over a year, as China has maintained tight border controls and a stringent “zero-Covid” policy. CNN
