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Last fall, the International Olympic Committee made a video call with activists demanding the removal of Beijing as the organizer of the 2022 Winter Olympics. During the call, campaigners said the Beijing Games would legitimize the Chinese government’s escalation of human rights violations.
“You, gentlemen and ladies, have your responsibilities,” replied Juan Antonio Samaranche, chairman of the upcoming COI Coordinating Committee for the upcoming Winter Games, according to notes from his time seen by BuzzFeed News. “We have ours.”
Activists said the mass arrest of Muslims in Xinjiang, the repression of democracy in Hong Kong and the repression in Tibet followed. OI officials deleted the questions, saying they led to better air quality and public transportation at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, according to the notes, and involved interviews with several activists.
Calling it the “Genocide Olympics,” dozens of human rights groups they asked IOC games to take to another country, with some comparing In 1936 the competition was held in Nazi Germany USA and Canada the treatment of Uyghurs by China and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang has been publicly denounced as genocide.
In response to a detailed list of questions about this article, the COI said it took into account the views of NGOs on issues including human rights for the Beijing Games. The commission said it has raised these issues with the government and local authorities and assured them that they will respect the Olympic Charter.
“Given the diverse participation in the Olympics, the COI must be neutral in all global political issues,” the COI said in an email. “Giving the Olympics to a National Olympic Committee does not mean that the IOC agrees with the political structure, social circumstances or human rights rules of its country.”
The IOC upholds the human rights principles enshrined in the Olympic Charter, and “takes this responsibility very seriously.”
“At the same time,” he said, “the COI has no authority and no authority to change the law or the political system of a sovereign system. This must be a legitimate role for governments and intergovernmental organizations.”
The COI has done it again and again he stressed its neutrality to answer questions about the ethics of gaming in China. But in a private video call on October 6, 2020, COI officials went further.
The call, which lasted more than an hour and was attended by a group of six activists and five IOC officials, began hopefully but ended with tension according to some activists present at the call.
Officials argued that the Olympics could be a catalyst for better infrastructure. They pointed to the 2008 Summer Olympics, arguing that Beijing had organized improvements in infrastructure and air quality when it organized that year.
“They still have air quality problems, but for the first time, they mentioned that they called the blue sky ‘Olympic blue,’ … It was the first time they had seen the blue air in Beijing,” an official said in a statement.
The call was made by Teng Biao, one of China’s best-known human rights lawyers. He told BuzzFeed News that he was not surprised.
“It is very difficult to defend the Chinese government in terms of human rights or the rule of law,” Tenge told BuzzFeed News. “So they can only find something like environmental policies.”
“The re-run of the Beijing Olympics can be understood as a protection against the CCP’s atrocities including the Uigur genocide,” he said.
Teng lived in Beijing at the 2008 Olympics and said, like other human rights lawyers, who was banned from traveling, was arrested and tortured while in police custody prior to the games. He told officials that his experience shows that re-running the Beijing Olympics could lead to damage. Couldn’t comment to police. But TI officials were indifferent, Teng said.
Samaranch, chairman of the COI’s steering committee, said in the call that the games are an “extraordinary force for good” that brings together people of different races and religions “as well as political systems, men and women, as well as political systems”. Notes viewed by BuzzFeed News.
“The world lives under many political systems,” he added. “We can’t go and say one or the other and agree.”
Zumretay Arkin, head of the program and defense at the Uyghur World Congress, told KOI officials in the call that Xinjiang’s relatives are missing.. He said he felt sorry for the officials, but the world is a complicated place – a reminder repeated by notes and other activists at the meeting.
Arkin told BuzzFeed News that he disagrees with IOC officials. “Since 2008 everything has gone from bad to worse,” he said. “We have a complete genocide. People are in concentration camps, and you’re saying the situation isn’t going to get any worse?”
“We are suffering from these policies,” he added. “You would never think of organizing games in North Korea or other places. Why is China different?”
Dorjee Tseten, executive director of the Free Tibet Students, told officials that she and others had risked revenge themselves and their families to publicly protest the IOC’s decision. He also stated that they had arrested many Buddhist monks and other Tibetans of different ethnicities hil in the government’s long decade of campaigning. Violent demonstrations began in Tibet Before the 2008 Games, and then president of the COI said the protests they were a “crisis” for the organization. Apparently the video call officials didn’t care, Tseten said.
“I was shocked,” he said. “How do you explain cold faces? They didn’t even acknowledge the suffering. ‘
Arkin, Teng and Tseten said discussions with the IOC have continued since October, even in the second call this month, but Arkin said nothing has changed significantly. US politicians and Europe, including Former US Ambassador to the United States Nikki Haley, in recent months have called on governments to boycott games. Critics say he can punish athletes unfairly. Activists say they see the diplomatic boycott as the only option, as it is difficult for the COI to move the games.
Human rights groups are also pressuring companies like Airbnb suspension of protective links With the 2022 Games.
Tseten and others who took part in the protests before the 2008 Games say China’s repression of democracy in Hong Kong and Xinjiang’s abuses mean they have less defense this time around.
“We told them, in the end, this is going to be a game of genocide,” Tseten said. “And historically, the COI will fall within that.”
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