Tibetan students lock themselves to Olympic rings to protest Beijing
games
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[December 11, 2021]
LAUSANNE (Reuters) -Two Tibetan
students chained themselves to the Olympic rings outside the Swiss
headquarters of the International Olympic Committee on Saturday to call
for an international boycott of next year's winter games.
The pair were part of the latest protest against the 2022 Olympic Games
over Beijing's abuse of human rights and its treatment of minorities.
The United States will not send government officials to the 2022 Winter
Olympics due to China's human rights "atrocities," it said earlier this
month.
Members of the Tibetan Youth Association in Europe (TYAE) and Students
for a Free Tibet held a sit-in at the IOC building in Lausanne as
officials gathered for a meeting.
The activists demanded countries withdraw from the event they have
called the "Genocide Games", which they say are being used to burnish
China's reputation.
China seized control of Tibet after its troops entered the region in
1950 in what it calls a "peaceful liberation". Tibet has since become
one of the most restricted areas in the country. Critics, led by exiled
spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, say Beijing's rule amounts to "cultural
genocide".
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Two activists unfurled a banner over the entry to the building reading,
"No Beijing 2022," while five students got inside the building and held
a sit-in protest.
"Despite mounting international criticism of the IOC and China, the
Chinese regime's human rights abuses in Tibet, East Turkestan, and Hong
Kong continue unabated," said Tenzing Dhokhar, Campaigns Director of
TYAE, one of the protesters.
"By collaborating with China, the IOC is making itself an accomplice of
the Chinese Communist Party's crimes, which will be sports-washed by the
Beijing Olympics."
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![](../images/121121pics/news_p59.jpg)
Members of the Tibetan Youth Association in Europe (TYAE) and
Students for a Free Tibet protest against the Beijing 2022 Olympic
Games outside the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lausanne,
Switzerland December 11, 2021. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
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Police started removing the campaigners after three hours of
protests. Organisers and a Reuters eyewitness described the protest
as peaceful, but the IOC said one of its security guards was
injured.
"The IOC always listens to all concerns that are directly related to
the Olympic Games. We have engaged multiple times with peaceful
protesters and explained our position, but we will not engage with
violent protesters who used force to enter the IOC building and
injured a security guard by doing so," the IOC said in a statement.
The organisation has previously said it is a force for good and
cannot have any influence over sovereign states.
Chinese authorities have been accused of facilitating forced labour
by detaining around a million Uyghurs and other primarily Muslim
minorities in camps since 2016.
China denies wrongdoing, saying it has set up vocational training
centres to combat extremism.
(Reporting by Denis Balibouse, writing by John Revill, editing by
Ros Russell)
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