Human right groups that have met several times in the last year with the IOC, are demanding full-blown boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing alleging human rights abuses against minorities in China, Fox News reports.
The pressure on the International Olympic Committee, athletes, sponsors and sports federations will significantly increase after a coalition representing Uyghurs, Tibetans, residents of Hong Kong and others issued a statement Monday calling for the boycott, refuting lesser measures like diplomatic boycotts and further negotiations.
Lhadon Tethong of the Tibet Action Institute, who was detained and deported from China in 2007 for leading a campaign for Tibet, said that the time for talking with the IOC is over and pointed that this cannot be games as usual or business as usual neither for the IOC nor for the international community since the situation where now is demonstrably worse and if the games go ahead, Beijing gets the international seal of approval for what they are doing.
A joint hearing in the U.S. Congress on the Beijing Olympics and China’s human-rights record is scheduled Tuesday.
Tethong pointed that it’s clear the IOC is completely uninterested in what the real impacts on the ground for people since people have tried in vain to have them understand the issues directly from those most impacted, the Uyghurs, the Tibetans and others.
Tethong suggested coalition members might lobby the IOC’s top 15 sponsors, American network NBC, which generates about 40% of all IOC revenue, sports federations, civil society groups and anyone that will listen.
IOC, essentially a sports business that derives about 75% of its income from selling broadcast rights and 18% more from sponsors, has repeatedly said it must be neutral and stay out of politics with its President Thomas Bach stating recently that “we are not a super-world government.”
China, who continuously denies accusations of genocide against the Uyghur people, has criticized the politicization of sports.
The IOC included the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights several years ago in the host city contract for the 2024 Paris Olympics, but it did not include those guidelines for Beijing. The Beijing Games are set to open on Feb. 4, 2022.
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