More questions on human rights for Beijing Winter Olympics
Zumretay Arkin posed a question in a recent online meeting with Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., the prominent International Olympic Committee member who oversees preparations for the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.
“Why should China, a country running concentration camps with at least 1 million Muslim Uighurs being detained, be allowed to hold the Olympics?” she asked.
Arkin, a spokeswoman for the World Uyghur Congress, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that the response was disappointing.
“We gave the IOC representatives first-hand testimony about our personal experiences and how we are impacted by China’s repressive policies,” Arkin said. “We were hoping it would open the door to a more valuable exchange.”
Instead, the IOC repeated its stance: It’s not a political body and doesn’t take a position on human-rights issues. It simply organizes sports events.
The Uighur body and other human- rights groups sent an open letter a month ago to IOC President Thomas Bach, asking that the games be removed from China. In reply, the IOC arranged an on-line meeting last week that included groups representing Tibet, Hong Kong and others.
In a statement to the AP, the IOC said: “Awarding the Olympic Games to a national Olympic committee does not mean that the IOC agrees with the political structure, social circumstances or human rights standards in its country. ... The IOC has neither the mandate nor the capability to change the laws or the political system of a sovereign country.”
Arkin was born in Xinjiang, immigrated to Canada, and still has family in northwestern China. She described Xinjiang as a human-rights issue, not simply a political issue.
“I am truly disappointed with the IOC’s response,” Dorjee Tseten, of Students for a Free Tibet, said in a statement after the meeting. “The Olympics should be a celebration of cultural diversity, but what China is doing is cultural genocide. ... Hosting the Olympics in China at this time when there are millions of people incarcerated is tantamount to the IOC giving China approval of these crimes.”
Although it says it remains above politics, the IOC holds observer status at the United Nations and has trumpeted its efforts to bring peace to North and South Korea. That was a constant theme at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Arkin said the World Uyghur Congress is not asking for a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics. That does not seem likely anyway, although calls for strong measures have come from Iain Duncan Smith, former leader of Britain’s Conservative Party, and U.S. senators Marco Rubio and Robert Menedez.