Tibetan groups calling on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to reject Beijing’s bid for the 2022 Winter Games are out of touch with the Himalayan region and their campaign is “doomed to failure,” a Chinese state newspaper said yesterday.
In an editorial, the Global Times accused the organizations of pandering to foreign audiences and said their accusations of rights abuses would “only cause laughter” among International Olympic Committee officials responsible for evaluating Beijing’s bid.
“They feel excited in slapping Tibet and China. The repeated protests also fit certain needs of Western societies, which will win them some resources for survival in the West,” the editorial said. “They are doomed to fail,” concluded the paper, a nationalistic tabloid published by the Chinese Communist Party publication the People’s Daily.
A coalition of more than 175 Tibet organizations on Thursday said they sent a report to IOC president Thomas Bach underlining that the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing failed to improve human rights in China.
The 12-page report said repression in Tibet is “currently at an all-time high” and warned that giving the Olympics to China again would be “making the same mistake twice.”
Beijing is competing against Almaty, Kazakhstan, for the right to host the 2022 Games. Kazakhstan has also been criticized for its human rights record.
The Tibetan groups say the IOC should reject Beijing and consider the Almaty bid “with extreme caution.”
An IOC evaluation panel is to begin inspections in Beijing on Tuesday. The full IOC is to select the host city on July 31.
Tibetan groups launched similar complaints ahead of the 2008 Games and were in the forefront of widespread street protests that marred China’s unprecedented global torch relay.
Despite sustained protests from rights groups and a massive security operation surrounding the events, the IOC in its final report on the Beijing Games said the Olympics remained “fundamentally a force for good, and a catalyst for collaboration and change.”
“They also help break down barriers and overcome differences. And this is exactly what the 2008 Games in Beijing achieved,” the IOC report said.
Beijing’s 2022 Olympic Games bid appears unlikely to attract the sort of political controversy that dogged the 2008 Games, partly as a result of the lack of results achieved by earlier protests.
A successful bid would make Beijing the first city to host both the summer and winter Games and promises to be far less expensive and disruptive than the 2008 Games. Beijing plans to spend US$3.9 billion on infrastructure and operations, a tiny fraction of the US$51 billion spent by Russia on the Sochi Games.
The bid boats strong public and government support and Beijing can claim a wealth of ready-built facilities, aligning it with the IOC’s goals for a more frugal, athlete-oriented games whose legacy will live on with robust sports programs and continuing use of venues.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was