The organizing committee of the Beijing Olympics on Thursday denounced “liesregarding the human rights situation in Xinjiang and reaffirmed the Chinese government’s position on Taiwan.
“These questions have nothing to do with the Winter Games, but I still feel compelled to make a brief comment.said Yan Jiarong, spokesperson for the Beijing 2022 organizing committee, in response to two questions posed by foreign journalists about Xinjiang, a vast region in northwestern China with a Muslim majority. “The questions are largely based on lies. Some authorities have already challenged this false information with plenty of solid evidence“, she assured.
Human rights associations accuse Beijing of having engaged since 2017 in a systematic repression of the Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic groups in the region, such as the Kazakhs. They accuse the Chinese regime of using forced labor and forced sterilizations and of having locked up more than a million people in re-education camps. Beijing disputes this figure and explains that it is “vocational training centersintended to fight Islamist radicalism, after attacks attributed to Uyghurs.
In December, the United States, followed by several other countries including Great Britain, Canada and Australia decided to boycott these Games diplomatically, to denounce human rights violations in China, particularly in Xinjiang. . These countries have not sent official officials to Beijing even though their athletes are taking part in the Games.
Asked about Taiwan, Yan Jiarong said that the island “is an inescapable part of China“. “It is a well-recognized international principle“, she launched. The communist regime considers Taiwan as one of its provinces destined to return to its fold, if necessary by force. At the Olympic Games, the territory is represented under the name of “Chinese Taipei“.
Athletes cannot parade behind the Taiwanese flag during the opening ceremony or use the island’s national anthem, given its special status. “What I mean is there is only one China in the worldMs. Yan insisted before concluding: “We are still against the idea of mixing sport and politics“.