Spokesperson Yan Jiarong from the organizing committee BOCOG has called the Chinese government’s reports of human rights violations in the Xinjiang region “lies”.
“The so-called forced labor” was invented by some “groups,” Yan said at the daily press conference with the IOC on the sidelines of the Winter Olympics in Beijing. She added the sentence several times: “We are against the politicization of the games.”
IOC spokesman Mark Adams defended the “apolitical” stance of the Lausanne-based organization. Questions about “concentration camps” in Xinjiang are “not relevant to this press conference,” Adams said. The IOC takes care of the observance of human rights at the Olympic Games and the rights of the athletes. “We leave it to other international organizations like the UN to look at the non-game aspects.”
Adams also evaded Yan’s claim that there was “only one China in the world” and that Taiwan was “an integral part” of what was “worldwide recognized.”
IOC emphasizes “magic of the games”
The IOC is concerned with the interests of the 206 National Olympic Committees and the “magic of the Games”, there are “many perspectives on many things in the world, it is our job that the Games take place”.
Democratic Taiwan insists on its sovereignty, China on reunification with the island state. Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Josef Wu said in an interview published by ZDF before the games that it was “obvious that China would like to attack Taiwan at some point”. At the games, Taiwan starts under the name of Chinese Taipei, Yan referred to Taiwan’s NOC as a “regional Olympic committee”.
From Xinjiang, human rights organizations have published reports of re-education camps, torture and forced labor. The US government is leading a diplomatic boycott of the games over the “genocide” of the region’s Muslim Uyghur minority. Human rights violations are also being reported from Inner Mongolia, Hong Kong and Tibet, which China’s leadership has described as lies.