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Activists call for a boycott of the Beijing Games
Photo: SANJAY BAID / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
180 human rights groups have called on governments around the world to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing (February 4-20).
This is to ensure, according to the activists, that the games "are not used to encourage the Chinese government in its appalling human rights violations and its crackdown on dissenters."
Since the Games were awarded to China in 2015, China's President Xi Jinping has "triggered an inexorable crackdown on fundamental freedom and human rights," said the human rights activists.
In a statement to the French news agency AFP, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said that campaign groups' concerns "have been and are being raised with the government and local authorities."
Human rights conditions »significantly worse«
The question of human rights is likely to become the determining topic alongside the corona pandemic by next winter at the latest.
The non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) sees considerable setbacks here.
"The 2022 Games will take place under human rights conditions that are significantly worse than the 2008 Games in Beijing," said an open letter to IOC President Thomas Bach in mid-December.
DOSB President Alfons Hörmann is also alarmed by the human rights situation in China, but has shown hostility to a possible boycott.
"Of course, what happens there worries all of us," said Hörmann at Sky Sports News: "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. "
Hörmann is cautious
In the German Olympic Sports Confederation, the German Olympic Sports Confederation will “seriously devote itself to the topic of China as part of our responsibility,” said Hörmann.
With a view to the games taking place a year from now, we want and will of course stick with it and especially prepare our athletes for them in good time. "
Hörmann relies on a concerted action of world sport.
“Together with the IOC, we naturally want and will coordinate with all other responsible parties from our neighboring countries,” said the 60-year-old: “But I would like to say explicitly: I don't see a boycott of the Games because the athletes will suffer first and foremost would.
And I think that can and should not be the right way. "
Accusation of "genocide"
The conflict over Tibet had already caused a stir around the 2008 Beijing Games.
At the moment there is criticism of the Chinese government's actions against the Muslim Uyghur minority.
Shortly before the end of his term in office, then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo officially accused China of “genocide”.
"I believe that this genocide is ongoing and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt by the Chinese party state to destroy Uyghurs," Pompeo recently declared.
China has been committing "crimes against humanity" since at least March 2017.
The new US President Joe Biden had also spoken of genocide last year with a view to China's action against the Uyghurs.
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