Beijing will host the 2022 Winter Olympics with boycott rumours and calls to move the country due to alleged human rights violations.
A coalition of human rights teams sent the request to the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, ahead of the body’s board meeting in Switzerland on Wednesday. In a letter, the organization asked the IOC to “reverse its mistake by awarding Beijing the honor of 2022. ” Winter Olympic Games “.
MORE THAN 300 GROUPS CALL ON UN TO INVESTIGATE HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN CHINA
The letter said that the 2008 Olympic Games had not reached China’s human rights record and has since built “an Orwellian surveillance network” in Tibet and imprisoned more than one million Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group, in the Xinjiang region. litany of other alleged hong Kong abuses of the Inner Mongolia region, as well as intimidation by Taiwan.
When asked Wednesday about china’s arrangements for the 2022 Olympics at an IIC press conference, Bach did not refer to human rights issues or the letter sent.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian accused the teams of trying to politicize the sport, which he said is contrary to the spirit of the Olympic Charter.
ORGANIZERS, COI TRIES TO ELIMINATE DOUBTS ABOUT TOKYO OLYMPICS
China has denied human rights violations. First he said that Uighur camps did not exist, then he said they were vocational education centers to combat terrorism.
“Through education and vocational training, Xinjiang has taken preventive measures to combat terrorism and deradicalization, well contained in the common terrorist activities of the past and the right to life, fitness and progress of all ethnic groups,” said another spokesman, Hua Chunying, for the last time. week. ” In the last 4 years, there hasn’t been a singles terrorist attack in Xinjiang. “
The IIC argued that the 2008 Olympic Games would reshape China and improve its human rights record. Instead, they are compared to the 1936 Hitler Olympics in Berlin; an authoritarian state that uses games as a stage.
A Washington Post editorial this month warned that China is losing the Olympics. “The world will have to wonder if China, which is slowly strangling an entire town, has the ethical price to host the 2022 Winter Olympics,” he said. I don’t think so. “
The times are precarious for the Swiss-based IIC: its finances, and those of the two hundred national Olympic committees and dozens of sports federations related to the Olympic Games, have been shaken by the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics until 2021 due to COVID-19. .
Bach warned two months ago that he opposed boycotts, but said he did not refer in particular to Beijing. The Swiss-based organization generates 73% of its revenue from the sale of television rights and 18% of sponsors and has noticed that its revenue is stare due to Tokyo’s delay. .
After the abandonment of European cities such as Oslo and Stockholm, the IAO had two bidders by 2022: Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan. Beijing won by 4 votes, taking the Winter Olympics to a country without culture, but an untapped giant market.
Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. , the IAO member overseeing the Beijing Games, refused to answer questions from The Associated Press about human rights violations reported in Xinjiang and referred to IAO comments.
“Attributing the Olympic Games to a national Olympic committee does not mean that the IAO has the political structure, social cases or human rights criteria in the country,” the IIC said in an email to the AP.
The IIC said it had “received assurances that the principles of the Olympic Charter would be respectable in the context of the Games. “He added that he will have to remain “neutral in all global political affairs. “
The IIC has included human rights needs in the host city contract for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, but has included those rules, the United Nations Guidelines on Business and Human Rights, for Beijing. human rights groups.
“NGOs, celebrities and other militant teams will put great pressure on China as boycott games approach, etc. ,” said Victor Cha, a white house ex-treasurer over Asia, in an email to the AP. “I, the IAO, would be very reluctant to get 2022 out of Beijing. “
China is also the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE IN FOXNEWS. COM
Athletes have shown strength by supporting Black Lives Matter occasions in the United States and elsewhere. German footballer Mesut Ozil, a Muslim of Turkish descent, opposed China and coined the word “Muslim Lives Matter”. most countries like Indonesia and Malaysia have been silent.
Murray Hiebert, a senior spouse at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said those countries must jeopardize their economic relations with China, adding the infrastructure investments they derive.
“Indonesia has been highly critical of Myanmar when it deported some 750,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees to Bangladesh in 2017 and early 2018, but officials have said little about the Uighur scenario in China,” he said.
The IIC strives to revise a rule prohibiting political occasions on Olympic podiums.
Casey Wasserman, who heads the organizing committee for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, said he wrote to Bach and asked him to reform the rule: “I don’t think an anti-racist speech is a political speech,” he said this month.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FOX NEWS APP
Mary Harvey, executive director of the Swiss Center for Sport and Human Rights, said athletes protesting racism and inequality in the United States have the same rights in Beijing or Tokyo.
But Lee Jones, who studies Asian politics at Queen Mary’s University in London, said athletes should talk. The Winter Olympics are much smaller than the Summer Games, with few Muslim athletes participating.
“Most athletes seem to need to separate the game and politics, unless they are involved, as in the activism of games in the United States,” he wrote in an email.
Jones said, however, that the growing complaint of China’s human rights record through foreign governments, adding to the United States and some European countries, makes the scenario potentially more serious for China than in 2008, when the crusade was largely run by Tibetan militants. Groups.
U. S. presidential candidate Joe Biden’s crusade supported the use of the term “genocide” for China’s movements in Xinjiang.
Jones said boycotts would not replace China’s behavior, but that China could act if it undermines its reputation, especially in Muslim-dominated countries.
“China has reacted furiously to any suggestion that it is abusing even the Uighur population, which is committing genocide,” he said.