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Beijing will become the first city to host
summer and winter Games next year after also staging the 2008
summer Games. But the IOC has been criticised for awarding the
2022 winter Olympics to China given the country's human rights
record.
Representatives of Tibetan and Hong Kong groups as well as the
world's largest group of exiled ethnic Uighurs said earlier on
Friday the IOC had not acted on their concerns after meeting
them in October.
They also said any assurances from China to the IOC were of no
value.
"We are taking this very seriously," IOC President Thomas Bach
told a news conference when asked specifically about claims of
rights violations in China. "Human rights and labour rights and
others are and will be part of the host city contract."
"We are working very closely with the organising committee. We
are monitoring supply chains, labour rights, freedom of press
and many other issues. This is our responsibility," he said at
the end of a virtual IOC session.
The United States earlier on Friday condemned China's abuse of
ethnic and religious minorities, including what it called
"crimes against humanity and genocide" in Xinjiang against
Muslim Uighurs and severe restrictions in Tibet.
"We are not a super world government where the IOC could solve
or even address issues for which not a United Nations security
council, no G7, no G20 has a solution," Bach said.
"This is in the remit of politics. We have to live up to our
responsibilities in our areas of responsibility."
China rejects U.S. charges that it has committed genocide
against Uighur and other Muslims in the remote western region,
where activists say more than 1 million are held in internment
camps.
Beijing says the complexes it set up in Xinjiang provide
vocational training to help stamp out Islamist extremism and
separatism. Allegations of forced labour and human rights
violations are “groundless rumour and slander”, the Chinese
foreign ministry says.
(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; Additional reporting by
Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Editing by Giles Elgood)
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