Do not mix politics with sport.
This is the speech hammered Thursday by Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), to the Chinese organizers of the Beijing Games following remarks made by the spokesperson for the organizing committee of the Olympic Games 2022, Yan Jiarong , who the day before denounced “lies” concerning the human rights situation in Xinjiang and the status of Taiwan.
Two foreign journalists had asked Yan Jiarong a question about Xinjiang, a vast region in northwestern China with a Muslim majority, and the latter had replied that "these questions are largely based on lies and that certain authorities have already disputed these fake news with lots of solid evidence.
"We have not ignored this problem," said Thomas Bach.
We were in contact with the Organizing Committee immediately after this press conference and reaffirmed the importance of “remaining politically neutral, as required by the Olympic Charter.
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"Vocational training centers"
Human rights associations accuse China of having engaged since 2017 in a systematic repression of the Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic groups in the region, such as the Kazakhs.
They accuse the Chinese regime of using forced labor and forced sterilizations and of having locked up more than a million people in re-education camps.
Beijing disputes this figure and explains that these are “vocational training centers” intended to fight Islamist radicalism, after attacks attributed to Uyghurs.
In order to denounce human rights violations in China, particularly in Xinjiang, the United States, followed by several other countries including Great Britain, Canada and Australia, decided last December to diplomatically boycott the 2022 Games in Beijing.
These countries have not sent official officials to Beijing even though their athletes are taking part in the Games.
