Criticism of the winter games in Beijing: “Nightmare for human rights”
Human rights activists have drawn a devastating balance sheet from the Winter Olympics in Beijing. “The games were a dream for China’s President Xi Jinping, but a nightmare for human rights,” Human Rights Watch’s Minky Worden told an online press conference with sports officials on Friday. The organization criticized human rights violations in China, such as the persecution of the Uyghur minority, intimidation of athletes, Chinese censorship and the politicization of the games.
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 has definitely made the wrong choice by awarding the games to Beijing.” The international community must ensure “that we never get into this situation again”.
The activists expressed sharp criticism of the IOC. “Their silence has made the IOC and its corporate partners complicit in Beijing’s efforts to whitewash human rights abuses through sport before the world public,” said Yaqiu Wang of Human Rights Watch. The organization emphasized that human rights are an “operative prerequisite for the Olympic Games”.
Rob Koehler from the Global Athlete association complained that the IOC had not yet complied with the request to include the UN declaration of human rights in its charter. “It’s a shame.” He condemned Chinese threats to athletes that they would face consequences if they exercised their right to freedom of expression and expressed criticism in Beijing.
“I’ve spoken to a lot of athletes who have told me that they wanted to come up and say something but decided it wasn’t worth the risk,” said sports representative Hoffmann. Human Rights Watch quoted athletes like Swedish speed skating gold medalist Nils van der Poel as saying after his return that it was “extremely irresponsible” to award games to a country “that violates human rights as blatantly as the Chinese regime does “.