Human rights groups ask IOC to move Olympics from China
TOKYO — China’s repression in Tibet, the status of the exiled Dalai Lama and its treatment of ethnic minorities spurred violent protests ahead of Beijing’s 2008 Olympics. In a letter, the group asked the IOC to “reverse its mistake in awarding Beijing the honor of hosting the Winter Olympic Games in 2022.” The letter said that the 2008 Olympics had failed to improve China’s human rights record, and that since then, it has built “an Orwellian surveillance network” in Tibet and incarcerated more than a million Uighurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic group, in the Xinjiang region. “Over the past four years there hasn’t been a single terrorist attack in Xinjiang.” The IOC argued the 2008 Olympics would transform China and improve its human rights record. “The world must ask whether China, slowly strangling an entire people, has the moral standing to host the 2022 Winter Olympics,” it said. The IOC said it has “received assurances that the principles of the Olympic Charter will be respected in the context of the games.” It added it must remain “neutral on all global political issues.” The IOC included human rights requirements in the host city contract for the 2024 Paris Olympics, but it did not include those guidelines — the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights — for Beijing.
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