Freeze China out of the 2022 Winter Olympics

By Richard Blake

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) have made a serious error of judgement in awarding the 2022 Winter Olympics to Beijing. They have not learned the lesson from their previous error of judgment in awarding the summer Olympics to China in 2008.

Back then, the IOC said that hosting the summer games would help the cause of human rights in China, as the spirit of the Olympics – tolerance, equality, sportsmanship and the rest – would have a positive influence on the dictatorship.

The Chinese Communist Party – the CCP – had other ideas. They did indeed promise concessions about human rights before being awarded the honour in 2008: foreign journalists, for example, would be allowed unrestricted access throughout China. But, like many of the words that have come out of the mouth of the Chinese Communist Party, now as in the past, these promises were just lies – told to help bring the Games to China. 

The Chinese Communist Party is good at lying. Their regime is founded on propaganda and suppression of the truth. The CCP have signed up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but of the 31 basic rights enshrined within the Declaration, 25 are denied to Tibetans. Most ordinary people within China are little better off.

Since 2008, the oppression within China has increased. The regime`s human rights record is so bad that President Xi has earned the title “Butcher of Beijing”. In deciding where to award the 2022 Winter Olympics, the IOC seem to have overlooked a number of inconvenient truths about modern day China:

1. Between 1 and 2 million Uyghurs and 500,000 Tibetans have been detained in 3,000 barbed wired compounds which the Chinese Communist Party call re-education centres. There, they are brutalised, starved, beaten and tortured until they are broken. When they are let out, they are dispersed around China as forced labour. The CCP have openly said that their intention is to destroy the Tibetan and Uyghur identity and culture. IOC, you have given the Winter Games to one of the most racist regimes on the planet.

2. Tibetans know all about cultural genocide: 98% of Tibetan places of worship and traditional education have been destroyed by the Chinese Communist Party since the 1950 invasion. IOC, are you blind?

3. When the Chinese Communist Party outlawed the Buddhist meditation association Falun Gong in 2000, they “disappeared” 500,000 practitioners. 10,000 of these political prisoners a year are estimated to be murdered to order by the regime, to steal their organs and sell them for transplant. “Body snatching”, commercially organised by the Chinese government. A nice little earner for the CCP. IOC, you are tainted with industrial scale killers.

4. People within China “disappear” at the will of the authorities. Torture is not only condoned by the CCP, it is a part of the dictatorship`s policy – to control by fear. IOC, why did you look the other way?

5. Mass surveillance and racial profiling are the new normal in many parts of the country. Is that in the Olympic Charter, IOC?

6. The Chinese Communist Party have broken International Law whenever it suits them – witness “one country, two systems” in Hong Kong; and their efforts to turn the East and South China Seas – international waters each the size of the Mediterranean – into Chinese territory. Threatening military flights over Taiwan. Seizing the Scarborough Shoals, 1000 km from the mainland and within Philippines territorial waters. Has someone lined your pocket, IOC?

And let me ask the IOC this: diversity is held to be an Olympic ideal. So, if it IS such a good thing, why are the Chinese Communist Party hell bent on destroying it within China? And why is the IOC turning a blind eye and rewarding these policies by awarding the 2022 Winter Olympics to Beijing?

The IOC should remember how another aggressive dictatorship used the Olympic Games to glorify their political system: the Nazi Games of 1936. Will they never learn?

This is the background to the Boycott Beijing movement. Please support it by writing to your MP, writing to the UK government or to your own government if you live outside the UK; joining protests on the ground or on social media; writing to your local or national newspaper. Join people of goodwill around the world. Boycott Beijing!

Let us FREEZE China out of the 2022 Winter Olympics.