An evaluation report by the Bundestag Academic Council, which analyzed the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the development of the human rights situation in China, shows that hosting the Olympics did not help improve human rights in China. (Web Image)
As the date of the Beijing Winter Olympics approaches, the question of whether hosting the Games in China, which has a poor human rights record, is contrary to the Olympic spirit has become a hot topic of debate, and there are already strong calls from political and civil society in many countries to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics, Deutsche Welle reports.
An assessment by the Bundestag Academic Council, which analyzed the 2008 Beijing Olympics and human rights developments in mainland China, found that, in the view of human rights advocates, the human rights situation in mainland China has gotten worse rather than better 13 years later, with millions of Uighurs in so-called re-Education camps, Hong Kong stripped of its autonomous status, and dissidents subjected to an unprecedented level of brutal repression.
The evaluation report states that the IOC’s expectation that hosting the Olympic Games would promote the opening up of mainland China and improve human rights is very unsubstantiated, and that neither the agreement signed between the IOC and the organizers nor the Chinese application materials contain any specific and binding commitments by mainland China to improve human rights. Both sides only expressed “general guarantees, expectations and hopes.”
The assessment report says that the current human rights situation in mainland China amply demonstrates that the judgment of human rights organizations back then was closer to the truth, and that there is no trend toward liberalization of the CCP in the human rights field. And the situation of Tibetans and Uighurs continues to deteriorate.
The report concludes by asking: What reason should one have to believe that the 2022 Winter Olympics will have a different effect than the 2008 Games? After all, the general environment in mainland China has not changed substantially.
Bowser, the human rights spokeswoman for the Bundestag’s Green Party caucus, who was involved in drafting the evaluation report, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung: “It was very naive and irresponsible to listen to the Chinese Communist Party organizers’ irrelevant promises about improving human rights back then. The human rights situation in mainland China has not improved at all, but has gotten worse.”
A number of U.S. lawmakers have already organized to launch a boycott of next year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing. Bowser, a German Green Party politician, also said the Beijing Winter Olympics must be treated with “contempt” on a political level.
She said that any political gestures and visits would only serve to give credit to the powers that be in Beijing and fuel their propaganda campaign. Bowser called on government representatives and other politicians to stay away from the Beijing Winter Olympics and to strongly condemn the Chinese Communist Party’s violations of international law.
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