Late on Thursday evening European time, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) released a video lasting five minutes and 57 seconds.

The IOC shows its president in the accompanying post on Twitter.

Thomas Bach looks at a screen.

In the video, Bach answers questions for around two minutes.

It is about the appearance of the Colombian IOC member Luis Alberto Moreno before the United Nations (UN), whose General Assembly called for Olympic peace.

It's not about Peng Shuai.

The day before, the Women's Tennis Association had announced its withdrawal from China due to the way the Olympic hosts treated tennis player Peng Shuai. But the IOC and its president have not published a second of their own talks with Peng Shuai, since Wednesday there have been two, and have not quoted a line of what Peng Shuai said. She appears to be doing well, the IOC claims, while the UN, the European Union, observers and athletes around the world are convinced that she is being monitored and presumably remains under house arrest.

There may be good reasons not to publish the video of the phone calls, the core of which is Peng's accusation that high-ranking party official Zhang Gaoli sexually coerced her. But to make it credible that there are no recordings and quotes to protect Peng, the IOC would have to be credible. But the IOC continues to give the strong impression that it is following the line of the Chinese leadership under Xi Jinping.

And if you focus on it and go beyond the drama of Peng Shuai, the fact that the Olympic host can make an athlete disappear for weeks and publicly muzzle her without being publicly criticized by the IOC, the real thing Problem, the real crisis of the IOC under Thomas Bach. The Peng Shuai case may surprisingly have burst into the preparations for the Olympics. But wasn't that predictable for the IOC when it selects a host again whose political strategy for decades has been to silence critical voices and make people disappear?

In 2008 the IOC was a guest in China with the Summer Games, in 2014 with the Youth Games, the repression got worse and worse.

Criticism from the IOC, even from Bach?

Was never heard.

Dealing with Peng Shuai fits into the sad picture.

In the picture of an IOC sending recordings of appearances in front of the UN to pretend size, while Xi Jinping has been showing off how small it really is for years.