Groups alleging human rights violations opposing minorities in China are calling for a full boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, a move that can create tension in the International Olympic Committee, athletes, sponsors and sports federations.
A coalition representing Uighur, Tibetan, Hong Kong and other citizens on Monday issued a call to boycott, avoiding smaller measures that had been introduced as “diplomatic boycotts” and new negotiations with the ICO or China.
“The time for discussions with the IIC is over,” Lhadon Tethong of the Tibet Action Institute said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press. “They may not be games of the same age or businesses of the same age; neither for the IIC nor for the foreign community. »
The Beijing Games are scheduled to open on February 4, 2022, six months after the end of the postponed Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
Rights teams met several times last year with the IIC, calling for games to be withdrawn from China. A key member of those Zumretay Arkin discussions of the Uighur World Congress.
Tethong he he he was arrested and expelled from China in 2007, a year before the Beijing Summer Olympics, for leading a crusade for Tibet.
“The scenario we are in now is obviously worse than it was then,” Tethong said, stressing that the IAO said the 2008 Olympics would affect human rights in China. “If games go a long way, Beijing gets the foreign seal of approval. “so they do. “
Tension over a boycott comes a day before a joint hearing in the U. S. Congress on the Beijing Olympics and China’s human rights record, and a few days after the U. S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee declared boycotts useless and harm athletes.
“People have worked in intelligent religion to have interaction with the IIC to make them perceive the mouth disorders of those most affected: Uighurs at the top of this list and Tibetans and others,” Tethong said. the genuine effects on the ground are for people. “
The IAO has continually said it will have to be “neutral” and remain out of politics. The Swiss-based organization is necessarily a sports company, which derives about 75% of its revenue from the sale of broadcast rights and 18% more from sponsors. . prestige of the observer at the United Nations.
“We are a supra-global government,” IAO President Thomas Bach recently said.
China’s Foreign Ministry criticized “the politicization of sport” and said any boycott “is doomed to failure. “China has denied accusations of genocide against the Uighur people.
A recent U. S. State Department report explicitly stated that “genocide and crimes against humanity” took a position last year opposed Uighur Muslims and minorities in western Xinjiang.
Tethong said he knew some athletes might oppose it, but said others, who have gained traction with the Black Lives Matter movement, may simply be allies. She identified this as a “no gloves” moment.
“Clearly there are many other people who are involved with athletes and their lifelong work,” Tethong said. “But at the end of the day, it was the IIC that put them in this position and held them accountable. “
American skier Mikaela Shiffrin, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, explained to athletes in a recent interview on CNN.
“In fact, you don’t need to be put in the position of having to be human rights as morals and be able to do your job,” he said.
Tethong warned that coalition members can simply attract the 15 most sensible sponsors of the IIC, US broadcaster NBC, which generates about 40% of all IAO revenue, sports federations, civil society teams,” and more. You must pay attention. “
Activists have already stayed with IAO sponsor Airbnb.
“The first is the ethical question, ” said Tethong. ” Is it appropriate to host a foreign occasion of goodwill such as the Olympic Games when the host country commits genocide just beyond the stands?”
In meetings with the IIC, activists say they have asked to see documents in which China has given “guarantees” on human rights conditions. Activists say the IIC did produce the documents.
The IIC included human rights needs several years ago in the host city contract for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, but did not come with the rules, the United Nations Guidelines on Business and Human Rights, for Beijing. involve the rules, long demanded through human rights groups.
Last week, U. S. -led human rights teams and Western countries, Britain, and Germany accused China of major crimes against the Uighur minority and demanded freedom from UN experts.
At the meeting, British Ambassador to the United Nations Barbara Woodward called Xinjiang “one of the worst human rights crises of our time. “
Woodward said that “evidence refers to a program of repression of express ethnic groups. Expressions of have been criminalized and the Uighur language and culture are systematically and widely discriminated against. “