(TibetanReview.net, Mar21, 2015) – An international coalition of 175 organizations campaigning for the resolution of the Tibet issue have urged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Mar 19 to reject Beijing’s bid to host its 2022 winter Games, reported Reuters Mar 19. However, given the fact that Kazakhstan’s Almaty is the only other candidate, the campaigners face an uphill task.
The coalition is telling the IOC that China had reneged on its promise to improve the human rights situation while being awarded the 2008 Olympic Games and that its record had only continued to deteriorate.
“The IOC wanted to believe that China would get all dewy-eyed and idealistic under the influence of the 2008 Games. The reality was that instead of increased sensitivity to human rights in Beijing, we saw increased self-confidence that abusing human rights was no problem on the world stage,” Alistair Currie of the Free Tibet organization, who co-authored the report, was quoted as saying in a statement.
The IOC is to elect the winner in July.
Following the repeated disruption of the 2008 Olympic torch relay, the IOC was forced to drop international legs from its Olympic Games torch relays, the report noted.
China threatened war to force a delegation from an independent Tibet to sign a “peaceful liberation” agreement in May 1951, promising a sort of “one country, two systems” status for Tibet, and then tore up that agreement to annex it totally after a Tibetan uprising in 1959. The exile Tibetan administration based in India says more than 1.2 million Tibetans had lost their lives during the invasion and under the occupation rule and that the human rights situation there continues to be tragic.