Hundreds of Tibetans and Uyghur activists demonstrated in front of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) headquarters located in Lausanne, Switzerland on Thursday. The protest comes a day before the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games.
Activists from all over Europe marched three kilometres from the IOC building to the Olympic Museum. They carried banners reading “Boycott Beijing Winter Olympics,” “Stop human rights violations in Tibet,” and “Games of shame.”
“Today here we are gathered, Tibetans from at least eight different countries in Europe, in front of the IOC building to protest against IOC awarding the Winter Olympics 2022 to the Beijing government,” Karma Choekyi, head of the Tibetan Community of Switzerland and Liechtenstein, told Reuters. She stated that more than 150 Tibetans had self-immolated after the last Beijing Summer Games in 2008 due to “much repression in Tibet.”
“So to award yet again the Winter Olympics 2022 to Beijing means the IOC has not taken [account] of gross human rights violations by the Chinese regime on the people of Tibet, east Turkistan (Xinjiang), southern Mongolia and even the fragile democracy in Hong Kong,” she said.
Alternative medal ceremony: Xi Jinping is awarded the top prize for the fastest destruction of a democracy, creating the least free place on earth, and the most people detained in camps since WWII.
— Free Tibet (@freetibetorg) February 3, 2022
Xi Jinping and Thomas Bach: We reject your #GenocideGames pic.twitter.com/8FOAU8U9YA
Only hours prior to the protests, Chinese President Xi Jinping said during a virtual meeting with IOC president Thomas Bach that Beijing will “deliver to the world a streamlined, safe and splendid Games.”
Bach controversially responded that the two years leading up to the Beijing Games he had seen “the dark clouds of the growing politicisation of sport on the horizon.” “We also saw… the boycott ghosts of the past were rearing their ugly heads again,” he said.
Bach’s comments were referring to the diplomatic boycott of the games announced by several nations, such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, and Australia, over human rights concerns in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Inner Mongolia, and Taiwan.
The president’s stance has sparked anger and prompted activists to accuse the IOC of being complicit in China’s humanitarian and political crimes against the Uighur Muslim minority and Tibetans.
Rights groups have long criticised the IOC for awarding the Games to China, citing the Chinese government’s mistreatment of the Uyghur Muslims and other minority groups. Although China denies the allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet, the US has already deemed China’s actions as genocide.
Human rights watchdog Amnesty International warned last month that the international community must be wary of being “complicit in a propaganda exercise” by China, who might misuse the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing as a “sportswashing opportunity.” The group has recently been using the term to describe the practice of nations covering up their poor human rights record through sporting events.