Every second Monday, cartoonist Niklas ”@Kludd-Niklas” Eriksson contributes a political satire for Kinamedia, Sweden’s biggest news site focusing on China.
Starting from today, the brief descriptions accompanying his drawings will be in English rather than Swedish.
Just like two weeks ago, the Peng Shuai debacle is depicted also in this cartoon, now focusing on the role of the International Olympic Committee and its president Thomas Bach as enablers for Beijing’s attempts to silence Peng and quite literary hide her away from the rest of the world.
It’s a shameful set-up, pun intended. For Thomas Bach, avoiding any further talk of a boycott of the coming Winter Olympics is obviously higher on the list of priorities than any concern for the safety of an olympic athlete like Peng Shuai.
A situation that Bach has indeed put himself in to begin with, by letting the Chinese regime hosting the games in the first place, despite multiple warnings regarding its increasing repression.
The behaviour of the IOC in this case is best summed up in an open letter to the organisation from Swedish activist Peter Dahlin, who found himself in a similar situation as Peng Shuai in 2016, being forced into a staged appearance on Chinese TV to ensure the audience of his well-being. (Kinamedia yesterday published a Swedish translation of Dahlin’s open letter.)
This week’s cartoon can be viewed in full size via this link.
A full collection of Kludd-Niklas’ works for Kinamedia can be seen here.
