Talk:Peng Shuai/Trim3

Draft

Various footages of Peng surfaced in Chinese state media, which was met with some skepticism. The International Tennis Federation, Amnesty International, the EU, and the UNHCHR called for proof of Peng's safety, while the WTA decided to suspend all tournaments in China. The IOC said it held two video calls with Peng.

Discussion

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On 17 November, Chinese state media outlet China Global Television Network released an email allegedly written by Peng to Simon, in which she said she was resting at home and that her allegation of sexual assault was not true. The email also criticized the WTA for releasing what she called unverified information about Peng without her consent. The authenticity of the email was cast in doubt; many noted that a typing cursor appears to be visible on the screenshot of the email. Responding in regard to the email, Simon stated that it only raised his concerns as to her safety and whereabouts. He reiterated that Peng's sexual assault allegation must be investigated "with full transparency and without censorship". He also threatened to withdraw WTA tournaments in China until sexual assault allegations made by Peng are properly addressed. Mareike Ohlberg of the Marshall Fund felt that the purported email was "not meant to convince people but to intimidate". The International Tennis Federation later said in a statement that it was committed to player safety and supports an investigation into the whereabouts of Peng. Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said in a statement that they had "seen the latest reports and are encouraged by assurances that she is safe". In contrast to the IOC's quiet diplomacy, Tony Estanguet, the president of the 2024 Summer Olympics, has called for the "greatest transparency" regarding the health and safety of Peng.

Amnesty International called on China to prove that Peng is safe and to investigate the sexual assault allegations against Zhang. On 19 November, the spokesperson of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Liz Throssell called on China to provide proof of her whereabouts and wellbeing, and urged for an investigation with full transparency into her sexual assault allegations. On the same day, Chinese state media reporter Shen Shiwei shared screenshots of a WeChat thread of what he alleged to be Peng's chats with her friend, which consisted of three photos of Peng posing with her cat and stuffed animals including Winnie the Pooh (a character blocked by censors after it was used as a meme for CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, though Pooh Bear merchandise is still legally allowed for purchase in China).

On 20 November, Hu Xijin posted videos showing Peng at a restaurant, on his Twitter page. Hu also stated that Peng stayed in her own home freely and did not want to be disturbed in the past few days, and that she would reappear and participate in public activities soon. Hu later shared videos showing Peng at the opening ceremony of the Fila Kids Junior Tennis Challenger Finals in Beijing. Hu tweeted "Can any girl fake such sunny smile under pressure? Those who suspect Peng Shuai is under duress, how dark they must be inside. There must be many, many forced political performances in their countries." Hu's newspaper also started to frame Peng's status "as an ideological struggle between China and the west". China's foreign ministry spokesman, after denying knowledge of the incident multiple times, said "I hope certain people will cease malicious hyping, let alone politicisation". After the French embassy in Beijing posted on its Weibo account about Peng, while censors did not take down the post, they prioritized comments of "mind your own business" and mentioning the Church sexual assault of children. Overall Chinese state media have "focused on her smiles and apparent good-spirits" and have not mentioned Peng's sexual assault allegation. According to Maria Repnikova, director of the Center for Global Information Studies at Georgia State University, they appear to be deploying the "familiar tactic of bypassing critiques or questions by underscoring western hypocrisy". A New York Times and ProPublica analysis of Twitter accounts identified 97 fake accounts promoting messaging about Peng from the Global Times editor and other Chinese state media.

On 21 November, the IOC said Peng had spoken to Thomas Bach, Emma Terho and Li Lingwei in a video call and said she "is safe and well, living at her home in Beijing, but would like to have her privacy respected at this time"; the IOC did not release the video. The WTA said that "It was good to see Peng Shuai in recent videos, but they don't alleviate or address the WTA's concern about her well-being and ability to communicate without censorship or coercion", requesting that she either be allowed to leave the country or speak live via teleconference with Steve Simon and no one else present. The WTA called for an investigation into Peng's sexual assault allegation, which, it said, was "the issue that gave rise to our initial concern". Nikki Dryden, a human rights lawyer and former Olympic swimmer for Canada, suggested that this was an IOC "media exercise" designed to allay growing threats of diplomatic boycotts for the 2022 Winter Olympics, saying "I'm so relieved she's alive, but the execution of this proof-of-life video is really troubling from a safeguarding perspective". Elaine Pearson, the Australia director of Human Rights Watch, was critical, saying, "Frankly, it is shameful to see the IOC participating in this Chinese government's charade that everything is fine and normal for Peng Shuai. Clearly it is not, otherwise why would the Chinese government be censoring Peng Shuai from the internet in China and not letting her speak freely to media or the public." Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), describing Beijing's silencing campaigns, said "What we have here is essentially a state-controlled narrative: only the government and its affiliated media are generating and distributing the content about Peng's story. While it is possible that Peng is well, the history of the Chinese government disappearing people and then making videos of them to prove that they are unharmed when it is, in fact, the opposite, should make us worried about Peng's safety." In The Strategist published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, OSINT journalist Tom Jarvis writes that despite "unanswered questions about Peng's situation", events "may have been staged to ease international pressure on the China Open and the government".

On 30 November, a European Union spokesman said "the EU joins growing international demands, including by sport professionals, for assurances that she is free and not under threat. In this spirit, the EU requests the Chinese government to provide verifiable proof of Peng Shuai's safety, well-being and whereabouts". On December 1, 2021, Dick Pound, a longtime member of the International Olympic Committee, stated that the unanimous conclusion by the people who have been on a call with Peng Shuai is that she is fine.

On that same day, the Women's Tennis Association announced that they would suspend all tournaments in China and Hong Kong. Michael Caster, co-founder of the human rights watchdog Safeguard Defenders, which monitors disappearances in China, said "the Women's Tennis Association has more credibility right now than Interpol in pushing back on China's gross human rights abuses, abduction of members of its organisation, and poking holes in what is just thinly-veiled coercive statements and propaganda". Erin Hale of Al Jazeera contrasted the WTA's concern over Peng with the muted response of Interpol during the disappearance of its former chief Meng Hongwei, where the organization had accepted his resignation letter and did not investigate Meng's whereabouts due to internal rules.

On 2 December, the International Olympic Committee reported that it held a second call with Peng on the day before, where she reconfirmed that she is safe and well, given the difficult situation she is in. The IOC did not provide any pictures nor videos of the call. IOC spokesman Mark Adams said "We can't provide you with absolute certainty on anything. All we can do is do the best we can in the process that we believe is in the best interests of the well-being of the athlete." The WTA received an e-mail purportedly from Peng who "expressed her shock for WTA's unfair decision to suspend all tournaments in China."

On 6 December, the Global Times posted an editorial on Twitter in English, accusing the WTA of "expanding its influence in a speculative way, bringing politics into women's tennis deeply, setting a bad example for the entire sporting world" while omitting the WTA's reason for pulling out of China; this editorial wasn't posted on Chinese-language social media. Xiao Qiang, editor-in-chief of the China Digital Times based in Berkeley, said "China's external propaganda on this matter is like a paper box that cannot hold water in front of its own people", observing that China's social media platforms have been completely silent about Peng and the WTA instead of the characteristic nationalism attacks on parties that are deemed to have "offended China" since the sexual assault allegations would be politically damaging to the Communist Party. David Bandurski, director of the China Media Project, said "We could talk here about a two-pronged strategy, about how China has enforced complete silence at home while pushing a narrative externally about meddling journalists and the politicizing of sport. But to call it a strategy at all suggests a sophistication that is not really there. What we actually see is desperation, the editor-in-chief of one state-run newspaper rushing out on Twitter and banging his dishpan. The point is to distract the world from obvious and damning facts."