Beijing (AP) – Exactly one year before the start of the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, calls for an Olympic boycott due to human rights violations in China are louder.
While the organizers in the Chinese capital gave the starting signal for the 365-day countdown to the games on Thursday, an alliance of 180 international human rights groups and representatives of minorities in China called on the international community not to participate in the games.
“Anything else is seen as support for authoritarian rule and the undisguised disregard for civil and human rights by the Chinese Communist Party,” the alliance said in an open letter. Seven Republican US Senators also called in Washington to withdraw the Games from Beijing. They referred to the persecution of Uyghurs and Tibetans and China’s threats against Taiwan. Senator Rick Scott introduced a Senate resolution on this.
China’s foreign ministry rejected the calls. “It is highly irresponsible of some parties to try to interfere and disrupt and sabotage the preparations for and the hosting of the Winter Games in Beijing in order to serve their own political goals,” said Foreign Office spokesman Wang Wenbin.
The human rights group Human Rights Watch sharply criticized the International Olympic Committee (IOC). “The IOC knows that China’s authorities are arbitrarily arresting Uyghurs and other Muslims, expanding state surveillance and silencing numerous peaceful critics,” said China Director Sophie Richardson.
By not publicly addressing serious human rights violations in China, the IOC mocked its own commitments and claims that Olympia was a “force for good”. Even the awarding of the 2008 Summer Games to Beijing did not bring any progress on human rights in China, Richardson said on Thursday. Rather, the repression has increased since then.
When asked by journalists about a boycott, US President Joe Biden’s spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in Washington that she had “no new status or no prospect of a change in our position”.
Meanwhile, Alfons Hörmann is still skeptical about the calls for a boycott. “Any boycott activities, as the past has shown, bring little or nothing here. That’s why I cannot imagine that we will go this way, but try to draw attention to these issues through our activities and to react skilfully “, said the President of the German Olympic Sports Confederation the TV broadcaster Sky Sport News.
Of course, everyone is concerned about what happens in China, said Hörmann. “There are also issues that we seriously address as part of our responsibility,” he added. “The human rights organizations point out that the situation has obviously not improved after the Beijing Summer Games,” said Hörmann. One will have to consider what skillful activities look like. “I don’t see a boycott of the games because the athletes would suffer first and foremost. And I think that cannot and must not be the right way.”
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