An international labor union has been added to the long list of human rights defenders opposing the holding of the next Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, in addition to blaming the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for having them granted to China when genocide and numerous crimes against humanity would be committed in this country.
The Belgium-based International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) on Tuesday released its report titled “China: Gold Medal for Repression,” which highlights human rights violations. The union says it sent a copy of its report to IOC President Thomas Bach.
The alleged actions against China include forced labor, the imprisonment of union leaders and democracy advocates in Hong Kong, intimidation of the LGBTQ + community, as well as the crackdown on ethnic and religious minorities in the name of “Anti-separatism and counter-terrorism”.
“We are trying to ensure that the IOC acts in accordance with basic human rights principles,” said Sharan Burrow, ITUC general secretary, in an interview with the Associated Press.
“We want governments to take a stand in favor of protecting their own athletes and we want sponsors to review their association with the Beijing Winter Games,” she added. You have large companies here who support these Olympics, but who should rather defend the values they say they respect, such as fundamental human rights. “
Some of the IOC’s biggest sponsors – who together donate billions of dollars to the organization – are well-known companies like Coca-Cola, Airbnb, Visa, Toyota, Alibaba and Procter & Gamble.
The CSI report comes less than three months before the opening of the Olympics on February 4. There have been several calls to boycott these Games, some even targeting sponsors and broadcasters, and calls to move these Olympics out of China. Protesters were even detained during the Olympic torch lighting ceremony last month in Greece.
Burrow, who grew up in Australia, quoted his compatriot John Coates, the very influential IOC Vice President and Bach ally.
“John always puts the Olympics before human rights,” she noted. But we would like people like John who live in democratic countries to understand that it is not acceptable to treat China like any nation. […] China simply cannot function in the global economy without being answerable for its crimes. People are important. People have rights. “
The previous actions of activists have been received, for the most part, by the silence of the IOC and the Chinese organizers.
NBA Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter was one of the few athletes to speak out about China’s human rights treatment, the Olympics, and the internment of at least 1 million Uyghurs and other minorities in western China.
Kanter, a Muslim like the Uyghurs who has family in Turkey, called Chinese leader Xi Jinping a “brutal dictator” and generally criticized the way human rights are respected in the country.
As a result, Celtics games are no longer shown in China, a blow to the NBA, which affects millions of dollars in revenue from China.
Due to the pandemic, the IOC and the organizers plan to put in place a severe policy against COVID-19, which will have the effect of limiting media access during the Olympics.
Participants in the Beijing Games will need to have been vaccinated to enter the country or undergo a 21-day quarantine, in addition to being tested for COVID on a daily basis. Journalists will be locked in the Olympic bubble, largely limiting their travel. The Chinese measures will also be more restrictive than the protocols of the Tokyo Games, which ended last August, and which allowed free movement in the country after a quarantine of 14 days.
Last week, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China released a list of 31 concerns about media access.
Over the past year, international journalists have been continually annoyed in their coverage of preparations for the Winter Olympics, have been denied access to test events, and have been unable to visit Olympic venues in China. […] This behavior directly contravenes the IOC Olympic Charter, of which Rule 48 states that the IOC “shall take [ra] all the measures necessary to ensure the most complete coverage of the Olympic Games by the various means of communication and information as well as the widest possible audience in the world ”.
The US government responded to this statement. “We urge the Chinese leadership not to limit the freedoms of the press and its movement, to ensure that journalists remain safe and that they are able to report freely, including during the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said.
Several US senators, led by former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, have proposed a diplomatic boycott by the United States. This boycott would allow American athletes to participate, but would not see any diplomatic delegation to China.
Sanitary restrictions
Even without a boycott, restrictions related to COVID-19 will significantly limit who can travel to China.
Facing several criticisms about the holding of the Olympic Games in China, the IOC replied that it only does sport, not politics.
“We must maintain this neutrality. What we are trying to defend is too valuable, IOC member Juan Antonio Samaranch said on Tuesday during a meeting on preparations for Beijing 2022, which he oversees. We are what we are and we can do what we can do. “
Samaranch, whose father was a Spanish diplomat and who led the IOC from 1980 to 2001, said the IOC’s partner in China was the local organizing committee, which must respect human rights in its operations.
“We are not arguing with the Chinese government” about rights, Samaranch said.
The IOC has an observer seat at the United Nations, and Bach recalled his efforts to bring the two Koreas closer together during the 2018 Olympics, in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Earlier this year he visited Hiroshima, used the bombed out city to bind the IOC to world peace. His supporters often speak of Bach as a potential candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Bach said that the Olympics must be a “neutral ground”, although the Olympic Charter also says that one of its objectives is “to promote a peaceful society, concerned with preserving human dignity”.
Pledges of unhindered access were reluctantly granted by China ahead of the Beijing Summer Games in 2008 due to pressure from the IOC. This time it is a 180 degree turn.
“In 2022, China doesn’t really care what the rest of the world thinks about it,” Chinese sports historian Xu Guogi said. She is now putting all her efforts to declare her intentions. If the world isn’t listening, so be it. “