The interview with the Chinese tennis player, the first granted to a foreign and independent media, was carried out in the presence of a head of the Chinese Olympic Committee, in a context of repression against those who interfere with those who hinder The diet.
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“We met Peng Shuai”, Titled the team, Monday, February 7th. The French sports daily is the first foreign and independent media (after an exchange of a few minutes with A Singaporean newspaper in December) to have been able to talk to the Chinese tennis player, whose situation raises a strong international concern since it accused, early November 2021 , a high leader of the Beijing regime of violating it.
The message, published on the Weibo social network, had been promptly censored and the 36-year-old player had disappeared for three weeks. Since it has reappeared, his rare speeches summarize to denial denials, and the interview granted to the Equipe on the sidelines of the Beijing Olympic Winter Games does not derogate from the rule.
“I have not disappeared”, “I never said that anyone had made a sexual assault”, “[my life] is like it must be: nothing special”, hammering the Former number one world facing the two daily journalists.
If it’s a matter of trying to know if it had “problems with the Chinese authorities” after its publication on Weibo, the former Olympic Tennis Champion responds with a dodger whose contents remind a position often expressed by the Chinese government:
“Feelings, sport and politics are three distinct things. My sentimental problems, my private life, should not be mixed with sport and politics. And sport should not be politicized. […] “
🗞 We met Peng Shuai
The one of the newspaper The team of this Monday, February 7th 2022 https://t.co/keabmfpwbz “/p>- Lequipe (@ the team)
Interview granted under conditions
Agreed and expected responses, about which the newspaper ensures that it was not illusion. In a lifestyle, the journalists explain to have “fully awareness” that Peng Shuai “would repeat the previously kept remarks to the Chinese official media” and that “every word would be weighed on a gram near”. It is impossible to imagine another possibility, in fact, with regard to the Chinese political context and that of the realization of the interview.
As the team explains, the request for the writing of meeting the player went through the Chinese Olympic Committee (COC) and was only accepted under conditions. The questions had to be submitted in advance, the athlete had to express themselves in Chinese (and not English as she was able to do it in the past in the press conference), and the interview was to give rise to a publication in the form of ‘Interview and without comment. The wording has accepted, stipulating that they would not allow replay on their part.
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