Observer Chronicle
Staff Reporter
August 3, 2015
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — The Beijing bid delegation had no sooner completed their congratulatory hugs and handshakes after being awarded the 2022 Winter Olympics than criticism from human rights teams over the IOC’s determination started to pour in.
After a closer-than-expected 44-40 win in Friday’s poll towards Almaty, Kazakhstan, Beijing will develop into the primary metropolis to host a summer time and winter video games. And identical to earlier than and after the town was awarded the 2008 Summer time Olympics, watchdog teams have been extremely essential.
“The IOC has despatched the improper message to the incorrect individuals on the incorrect time,” the Worldwide Tibet Community stated in a press release. “China needs the world to disregard its deteriorating human rights and be impressed by Chinese language can-do pragmatism as an alternative. That is precisely what the IOC has accomplished. The respect of a second Olympic Video games is a propaganda present to China when what it wants is a slap within the face.”
China claims Tibet has been a part of its territory for hundreds of years, however Tibetans say the Himalayan area was nearly unbiased till China occupied it in 1950. Beijing staged a crackdown on Tibetan protests forward of the 2008 Summer .
“Many individuals will keep in mind how Tibet campaigners made our presence felt within the run-up to 2008,” the Worldwide Tibet Community assertion stated. “We hope that constructive change in Tibet within the subsequent seven years will imply that we do not have to make use of the Olympics to spotlight Tibet’s trigger once more.”
The group additionally stated it was planning a protest on Friday at IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.
From New York, Human Rights Watch, which had additionally complained about human rights abuses by each Beijing and Kazakhstan forward of the vote, stated the IOC had “tripped on a serious human rights hurdle.”
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“The Olympic motto of ‘greater, quicker, and stronger’ is an ideal description of the Chinese language authorities’s assault on civil society: extra peaceable activists detained in document time, topic to far harsher remedy,” stated Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch.
In Hong Kong, metropolis legislator Albert Ho, a lawyer and founding member of Hong Kong-based China Human Rights Legal professionals Concern Group, stated the choice instructed “the IOC has misplaced the spirit of the Olympics.”
“This provides Beijing the improper sign that the entire world not cares concerning the human rights state of affairs in China … and that is the worst time to provide Beijing such a sign,” stated Ho, who demonstrated towards final month’s mass arrest of human rights legal professionals by mainland Chinese language authorities. If the IOC “had the wishful considering that internet hosting the video games might assist result in change, they want solely to look again at 2008. Then they will see how their wishful considering proved to be completely incorrect. Beijing stepped up repressive measures within the lead-up to the video games.”
Reporters With out Borders later issued a press release through which the Paris-based group defending press freedom stated it’s “outraged” by the IOC’s choice.
“After the 2008 Beijing Summer time Olympics and the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, as we speak’s announcement exhibits that the IOC continues to help regimes that brazenly flout human rights and freedom of data,” it stated. “Beijing will now be the world’s first metropolis to host each a Summer time and Winter Olympics though the Chinese language authorities are urgent on with a serious crackdown on journalists and bloggers. Reporters With out Borders is appalled that the IOC is so out of contact with the truth of the human rights state of affairs in China.”
China is ranked 176th out of 180 nations within the 2015 Reporters With out Borders press freedom index.
