NEWS//The IOC and the Uyghur genocide

February 04, 2022

Blog, News

The Beijing Winter Olympics began today.

Axios reports that, ahead of the Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) “is declining to take a stand on genocide in Xinjiang — and insisting its only mission is to run the Games successfully.

IOC has used past Olympic Games to call attention to human rights issues, most notably South Africa was banned from 1964 to 1970 because of its support for apartheid.

This year the IOC is not mentioning human rights abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang not because it is not happening, but because there is no international consensus on the issue.

"Our responsibility is to run the Games in accordance with the Olympic Charter ... and to bring together the athletes from 206 teams and the IOC refugee team under one roof," Bach said in December when asked about China's human rights violations in Xinjiang.

"The sporting sanctions against South Africa came in the wake of broad agreement within the international community on taking a wide range of political measures against the South African government, backed by the United Nations," an IOC spokesperson told Axios, in response to questions about China and the Uyghur genocide.
"The IOC cannot take such a position unilaterally when most actors of the international community continue to have diplomatic, political, cultural or economic exchanges with a particular country."

Nonetheless, numerous governments, including the United States, have announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, due to the campaign of repression and genocide that Chinese authorities are currently waging against ethnic Uyghurs in the country's northwest region.

Sources: Axios, Reuters, New York Post, Human Rights Watch