Galwan provocation: India announces virtual boycott of Beijing Olympics

New Delhi, Feb 3 (UNI) India on Thursday announced a virtual boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, saying that its top official in Beijing would not attend the opening or closing ceremony of the event, following China’s provocation of deploying a PLA commander who had led the bloody Galwan 2020 clashes, as torch bearer for the Winter Olympics torch relay. Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said that India’s Charge D’Affaires at the Beijing Embassy would not be attending the opening or closing ceremony of the Olympics. “We have seen reports on this issue. It is indeed regrettable that the Chinese side has chosen to politicize an event like the Olympics. “I wish to inform that our Charge D ‘Affaires of our embassy in Beijing, will not be attending the opening or the closing ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics,” he said. The state-run Global Times reported that Qi Fabao, a regiment commander, who had sustained a head injury in the fighting in the freezing Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh on June 15-16, 2020, was a torch bearer at the Beijing Olympics on Wednesday. Qi Fabao, the regimental commander of the PLA’s Xinjiang military command, was deployed to carry the flame at the Winter Olympic Park on Wednesday. Col Qi Fabao had led 150 PLA soldiers on the fateful night of June 15-16, 2020 when Indian Army Colonel Santosh Babu came to the buffer zone area in Galwan Valley to dismantle Chinese infrastructure. Qi Fabao ordered his troops to form a battle formation, instead of discussing the issue. However, the “moment Col. Fabao attacked he was immediately besieged by the Indian army troops” and given a bloody head injury, forcing him to retreat, says a new report on the events released by The Klaxon, an Australian daily. In order to rescue Col Fabao, two of the PLA soldiers (Chen Hongjun and Chen Xiangrong, whose names have been acknowledged as among the four dead by China) came forward to help. “Battalion commander Chen Hongjun and soldier Chen Xiangrong entered the encirclement of the Indian army and started (a) physical scuffle with Indian troops using steel pipes, sticks and stones to provide cover for (their) commander to escape”, the report states. It says Colonel Qi Fabao was “hit in the head by an Indian army solider”, and “rushed back with serious injuries”. The report says PLA soldiers Hongjun and Xiangrong were “immediately silenced by the Indian army”. Another Chinese soldier, Xiao Siyuan “of the Motor Infantry Battalion of the 363rd Regiment, Frontier Defence, Xinjiang Military Region” who had been “recording the event” was also killed when he joined the fighting. His name is also among the four that China has named as killed. It states that “after Col. Fabao left the arena”, and after watching the “bodies of Major Chen Hongrun, Junior Sargeant Xiao Siyan and Private Chen Xianrong,” the “PLA soldiers panicked into retreat”. The report says that 38 PLA soldiers died due to drowning, even though China has acknowledged that only one – Wang Zhuoran – died due to drowning. Twenty Indian soldiers, including commanding officer (CO) Col Santosh Babu, were killed in the fierce clash with Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh, in what was the biggest military confrontation in over five decades between the two sides. The Chinese side, after keeping mum over their casualties, revealed after 8 months that four of their soldiers had been killed. Arif Khan is the only entry from India in terms of athletes during the winter Olympics being held from February 4-20. He will represent India at the Slalom event (alpine skiing) and belongs to the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir.