The President of the Women’s Tennis Association, Steve Simon, “remains deeply worried” concerning the freedom of speech of the Chinese player, reappeared in the Chinese media last weekend.
Le Monde with AFP
The President of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), who manages the female tennis tour, does not hear his vigilance. Steve Simon expressed his concern on Saturday 27 November as to the freedom of speech of the Chinese Peng Shuai, who accused at the beginning of November a senior leader of his country forced sex.
m. Simon “remains deeply concerned about the freedom of Peng vis-à-vis any censorship or coercion and decided not to recover with it by e-mail until it is certain that his answers would be personal and not those of his censors, “said a spokesman for WTA. “Steve Simon contacted Peng Shuai via different communication channels. He sent him two e-mails, but it was clear that his answers were influenced by others,” spokesman explained.
Unlike the reappearance of the athlete in the Chinese media on last weekend, this discreet man, and until then unknown to the general public, assured a few days before that the WTA was “ready to remove [from China ] His activities and to deal with all the complications that derive it “if the country refused to cooperate.
The spokesperson did not want to return to information from the BBC relying on the statements of a “friend” of the player and that she would have sent an e-mail to Steve Simon, Thank him for his concern, but asking him not to intervene in order to leave it “quiet”.
Slight on the fate of Peng Shuai
The 35-year-old athlete, double champion in Roland-Garros in 2014, had published early November on the Chinese social network Weibo a long message on his relationship with the former vice Prime Minister Zhang Gaoli, forty years his elder. In this text in the form of an open letter quickly censored on the Chinese Internet, it varied for a long time on its feelings with regard to the former leader, retired since 2018. She reproached him in particular for having forced him to Sexual relation three years ago.
Many global tennis stars, Chris Evert in Novak Djokovic, and several Western countries, including France and the United States but also the European Union and the United Nations, asked Beijing to shed light on The fate of Peng Shuai.
The young woman has reappeared last weekend in a Beijing restaurant and during a tennis tournament organized in the Chinese capital, according to videos published by official media. Sunday, it also dialled videoconferencing with the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach. According to the IOC, Peng Shuai explained that it was “healthy and saves to his home in Beijing but that she would like her private life to be respected.”
However, the purely official and policed nature of his statements as well as his appearances was not enough to reassure, and the support movement continued. Tuesday, Beijing finally reacted officially, while the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was generally refusing to any comment on this case, claiming that it did not fall within the diplomatic sphere.
But, instead of giving news from Peng Shuai, the spokesman for Chinese diplomacy, Zhao Lijian, called to “cease deliberately set up this issue for hostile purposes, and especially to do a political question “. The next day, it is the European Union that asked the Chinese authorities of the “verifiable evidence” of the freedom of movement of the player and a “transparent” survey on allegations of sexual abuse.