The Olympic flame yesterday arrived in Beijing amid calls from overseas critics for a boycott of the Feb. 4 to Feb. 20 Winter Games.
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Secretary of Beijing Cai Qi (蔡奇), the top official in the Chinese capital, received the flame at a closely guarded airport ceremony.
Beijing successfully hosted the Summer Olympics in 2008, although the event failed to produce the more open political and social environment in China that many had hoped for.
Photo: AFP
On Monday, advocacy groups disrupted the flame lighting ceremony in southern Greece, accusing the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of granting legitimacy to rights abuses in China.
IOC officials have said that they are committed to seeing the competition go ahead and that rights issues are not part of their remit.
Speaking in the ancient stadium of Olympia, IOC president Thomas Bach said that the Games must be “respected as politically neutral ground.”
Rights advocates on Tuesday said that human rights in China have deteriorated since 2008, claiming that the Summer Games “emboldened” China.
Human rights advocates say that China’s oppression of political critics, along with minority groups, including Tibetan Buddhists and Muslim Uighurs, and a crackdown in Hong Kong should prompt athletes and politicians to shun the Games.
China says that spectators from outside China are not to be allowed to attend the Winter Games because of COVID-19, and that athletes must remain in a “competition bubble” to guard against the spread of the virus.
At yesterday’s flame handover, Beijing Deputy Mayor Zhang Jiandong (張建東) said that the city was committed to holding a “simple, safe and excellent Games.”
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