“The Genocide Games”

Ban Beijing Winter Olympics 2022

To: Thomas Bach, President, International Olympic Committee 

cc: 

Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Canadian Heritage Minister 

Ms. Tricia Smith, President, Canadian Olympic Committee

Mr. Mark Tewksbury, Vice President, Canadian Olympic Committee

We have become aware that the International Olympic Committee (IOC), convened a conference on October 5th, 2018, which was entitled Olympism in Action Forum: Trends and Perspectives. 

At this forum, a number of venerable keynote speakers participated in a round table discussion as to how the Olympics provides a platform to the world on issues such as human rights. 

‘Sport should continue to play its role in creating awareness, with sporting events drawing attention to human rights abuses where they exist and helping to open dialogues with countries and governments that need to address these issues’ (p.7)

Is the IOC not aware that the Chinese government has more than 6 million Uyghurs and other Turkic people of East Turkistan (also referred by Beijing as “Xinjiang”) who have been forcibly detained in concentration camps and forced labour camps in the region of East Turkistan and where torture, forced labour, forced sterilisations and sexual violence are the norm? How do these atrocities sit with the IOC if ‘human rights protection’ (p.7) is its core principle?

This year, in 2021, the U.S., Canada, Britain, Netherlands and Lithuania have officially stated that genocide is occurring to the Uyghurs. How can the IOC ignore the massive scale of the Uyghur genocide in East Turkistan with horrifying human rights abuses and still speak of the IOC’s reputation for fostering ‘integrity in sports’ and ‘unity and civic pride’ when the IOC has selected Beijing to host the next Olympic Winter Games? 

The IOC speaks about Olympic values:

 “The power of sport and the Olympic values to bring people together, to motivate and inspire them to work towards a better world” (p6).

How can the IOC use the Beijing Olympics as a platform ‘to work towards a better world’ when there is an ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs perpetrated by the government? Human rights abuses of groups such as Chinese Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong practitioners, and Uyghurs and other Turkic people of East Turkistan who are regularly subjected to imprisonment, torture, executions and live organ harvesting? Is the IOC not aware that these gross human rights abuses are occurring in China?

How can the idea of a ‘better world’ under Beijing be resolved when as recently as June 2020, Beijing imposed the National Security Law in Hong Kong has criminalized supporters of democracy as “acts of subversion, secession, terrorism” and has maximum penalties of life imprisonment? What does the IOC have to say about the thousands of democracy supporters such as Jimmy Lai who have been arrested simply for wanting fair democratic elections?

The IOC focuses on refugees through the Refugee Olympic Team (p.6), which had participated in the 2016 Olympics. Does the IOC know that there are millions of refugees that have been persecuted and displaced by the Chinese government, and who are fleeing to democratic countries such as the US, Australia and Canada? Why the silence on those who are forced from their homeland because of Beijing?

Is history repeating itself when in the 1936 Olympics, the IOC legitimized the murderous Nazi Party by giving it an international platform? Is the IOC doing exactly the same with the 2022 Beijing Olympics? How can the IOC have its reputation stained by associating with a murderous state-party?

In 2017, the IOC entered into a 10 year partnership with Alibaba, and its fintech subsidiary Ant. “IOC and Alibaba Group launch historic long-term partnership as Alibaba becomes Worldwide Olympic Partner through 2028.”

The then Chairman of Alibaba Jack Ma announced that both IOC and Alibaba had ‘shared values and a common vision’ and as a result, a very deep partnership emerged between IOC and Alibaba. The IOC has mandated that Alibaba ‘support the organisers of each edition of the Olympic Games, and the Olympic Movement around the world’ and that this will last until 2028.

Recently, the New York Times (January 20, 2021), reported that Alibaba was using its “website for its cloud computing business (that) showed how clients could use its software to detect the faces of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities within images and videos”. 

For a full report of this, please read: ‘Alibaba Admits Developing Racist Uyghur Recognition’ 

How can the IOC continue its partnership with Alibaba if the company openly targets Uyghurs, hoovering up data into Alibaba’s cloud server? 

How can the IOC guarantee that Alibaba will not use its digital platform for surveillance when the Chinese National Intelligence Law (2017) has complete authority to ask Chinese nationals and organisations to monitor and investigate foreign and domestic individuals and organisations? Under these circumstances, how can the IOC, as an international peak sporting institution, guarantee human rights and act”as a catalyst for social and cultural change, and better embed human rights protection at their core” (p7).

We call upon the IOC to be the leader that it states itself to be by championing human rights and standing in solidarity with the victims of the Chinese government. We ask that the IOC be the voice of the voiceless and use its global presence as the clarion call in denouncing the atrocities done by the totalitarian Beijing, a regime that is a transnational criminal organisation.

We, the undersigned, ask that the IOC immediately stop the 2022 Beijing ‘Genocide’ Olympics and instead promote the 2022 Winter Games as the ‘Freedom Games’ in a democratic country.

Thank you,

Signed 

International Support for Uyghurs