“The games were a dream for Chinese President Xi Jinping, but a nightmare for human rights”Human Rights Watch’s Minky Worden said Friday at an online news conference with sports officials.
“The 2022 Winter Olympics helped perpetuate human rights abuses first introduced by the Chinese government during the 2008 Games.”added Yaqiu Wang of the US NGO.
Human Rights Watch: ‘Silence has made IOC involved’
“Wrong choice of the IOC”
“The Full Spectrum of Human Rights Violations” have continued during the past two weeks, “whether crimes against humanity in Xinjiang or censorship in the Olympic Village”said Wang: “By remaining silent, the IOC and its business partners have joined the Chinese government’s effort to whitewash human rights abuses through sport before a global audience.”
The communist leadership used the games “to cover up their human rights abuses, to legitimize their power and their role on the world stage”said Noah Hoffmann, three-time US cross-country skiing champion and 2018 Olympic competitor. “The International Olympic Committee definitely made the wrong choice by awarding the Games to Beijing.” The international community must ensure “that we will never get into this situation again”.
Human Rights Watch cited athletes like Swedish speed skating gold medalist Nils van der Poel, who said it was after he returned “extremely irresponsible”to award games to a country “which violates human rights as blatantly as the Chinese regime is doing”.
US diplomatic boycott
In the Xinjiang region, according to human rights organizations and eyewitness accounts, the Chinese Communist Party operates detention camps where people from the Muslim Uyghur minority are tortured. Led by the United States, several governments are diplomatically boycotting the games because of the “genocide.”