The Olympic flame arrived on Wednesday (October 20) in Beijing, which will host the Winter Olympics in February 2022, state media reported. A ceremony is to take place later in the day at the Olympic Tower in Beijing before a presentation tour, said the agency China New.
The flame was lit Monday in Athens and transmitted the next day to the organizers of the Beijing Olympics. The lighting ceremony in Greece was disrupted by activists asking the IOC to postpone the event, accusing China of perpetrating a “Genocide” against the Uighurs and Tibetans.
Protesters attempted to display a Tibetan flag and a banner “No Genocide Games” before being stopped by security. Human rights activists accuse the Chinese government of religious repression, torture, forced sterilizations and cultural disintegration through re-education campaigns.
Boycott calls
After initially denying the existence of camps in Xinjiang, China then justified them as vocational training centers aimed at reducing the attractiveness of Islamist extremism. Several calls to boycott athletes and governments have also been launched.
IOC President Thomas Bach emphasizes the political neutrality of his organization and said that it is up to governments to live up to their responsibilities.
A victim of the boycott of the Moscow Games in 1980, the former fencer said such measures only penalized athletes, and insisted that the IOC was addressing the issue of rights. “Within the framework of its competences”. Nearly 2,900 athletes from 85 countries will take part in the Beijing Winter Olympics from February 4 to 20, 2022.