PARIS — IOC President Thomas Bach said Saturday that the “hate speech” directed at boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting at the Paris Olympics is “totally unacceptable.”
“We will not participate in a politically motivated culture war,” Bach said at a mid-games news conference, which also attempted to draw a line under days of global scrutiny over the gender of female boxers.
“What is happening in this context on social media with all this hate speech, with this aggression and abuse, and fueled by this agenda, is totally unacceptable”, said the leader of the International Olympic Committee.
Khelif, from Algeria, and Lin, from Taiwan, have been the focus of intense attention – and often inaccurate comments – because they were both disqualified from the 2023 world championships.
The Russia-led International Boxing Association – which was banned from the Olympics by the IOC in a years-long dispute – withdrew boxers from the world championship 16 months ago in India, citing gender-based testing that has not yet been specified and has not been proven.
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The issue of women’s boxing was linked by Bach to what he called a broader campaign, led by Russia, against the IOC and the Paris Olympic Games, where only 15 Russian athletes compete, and as neutrals without their national identity. The IOC and international sports bodies isolated Russia during the military invasion of Ukraine.
“What we saw from the Russian side and in particular from the (IBA),” said Bach, “they already undertook long before these Games a smear campaign against France, against the Games, against the IOC.”
The Algerian Olympic and Sports Committee has filed an official complaint with the IOC to protest online harassment of Khelif, which amounts to “a serious violation of sporting ethics and the Olympic Charter by one of the participants in the boxing tournament” at the Paris Olympics, according to a statement published on the committee’s Facebook page.
The statement did not name the boxer who allegedly posted derogatory comments about the Algerian, but warned that the IOC “has issued a final warning to delete all posts that concern our heroine Iman Khalif.”
“We reserve the right to prosecute all those who participated in the heinous campaign against our heroine Imane Khelif,” the statement said.
Both Khelif and Lin, a two-time world champion, competed at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and did not win medals.
“We have two boxers who were born women, who were raised as women, who have a woman’s passport and competed for many years as women,” Bach said. “Some want to have a definition of who a woman is.”
The IBA fueled tensions on Friday by saying it would pay $100,000 – the prize promised to each Olympic gold medalist in Paris – to the Italian boxer who stopped fighting Khelif in the first minute of Thursday’s fight.
“Everyone in our world apparently feels obligated to say everything, without really considering the sometimes very complex circumstances,” Bach said. “You won’t make a good decision if you organize a poll on social media ‘Do you think this person is a woman or not a woman?’”
Boxing is the only sport at the Paris Games that is not administered by a dedicated global governing body.
The tournaments are being organized by a sports unit appointed by the IOC, as was the case three years ago in Tokyo, due to the Olympic leaders’ disagreement with the IBA over issues of governance and integrity, as well as financial dependence on Russian state energy company Gazprom. .
It has all combined to leave boxing in Paris governed by a set of rules largely unchanged since the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics – a period in which the governing bodies of athletics, swimming and cycling have reviewed and updated their eligibility rules addressing gender issues.
Bach challenged critics of Olympic women’s boxing “to come up with a new, scientifically based definition of who is a woman and how someone who was born, raised, competed and has a woman’s passport cannot be considered a woman.”
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
