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Post by Admin on Sept 29, 2021 20:40:07 GMT
No international fans will be allowed to attend the Beijing 2022 winter Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced on Wednesday.
The IOC said the organizers of the Olympics delivered during a meeting a list of principles they intended to follow in an effort to keep the event “safe and successful” and on schedule. That includes only selling tickets for the Beijing 2022 Olympics to fans living in mainland China.
“The IOC and [International Paralympic Committee] welcome the decision to allow for the sale of tickets to spectators residing in China’s mainland. This will facilitate the growth of winter sports in China by giving those spectators a first-hand Olympic and Paralympic experience of elite winter sports, as well as bringing a favourable atmosphere to the venues,” the IOC said in a statement.
“However, all parties feel for the athletes and the spectators from around the world, knowing that the restriction on spectators from outside mainland China had to be put in place in order to ensure the safe holding of the Games this winter,” the IOC added.
The IOC also announced that athletes that arrived in China who were not already vaccinated would have to quarantine for 21 days after entering the country, but the committee noted that they would consider those who had “a justified medical exemption.”
Additionally, both Chinese and international athletes participating in the winter Olympics will have to undergo daily COVID-19 testing.
Though the Olympics are not slated to start until Feb. 4, 2022, the announcement comes as the international organizations are already investigating the best ways to keep both athletes, staff and domestic residents safe from a possible COVID-19 surge.
It is a task that Japanese officials struggled with during their Olympics this summer as the country saw new waves of COVID-19 cases, including athletes who arrived into the country who had tested positive for the virus.
Tokyo reported a surge of COVID-19 cases before, during and even after the Olympics ended, often hitting new COVID-19 infection records. After the Tokyo Olympics, the city reported a record of 5,773 COVID-19 cases in mid-August.
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Post by Admin on Nov 28, 2021 20:12:33 GMT
A potential diplomatic boycott hangs over the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing 10 weeks ahead of the opening ceremonies.
The United States and the United Kingdom have said they are considering not sending high-level government officials to the Games in protest against ongoing human rights abuses in China. Calls for other countries to do the same are growing louder.
"We will see non-governmental organizations speaking out more intensively in the coming months, increasing the pressure on national governments," Jürgen Mittag, a sports policy expert at the German Sports University in Cologne, tells DW.
Mittag expects the boycott discussion to peak in mid-January. Then, he says, "we will be able to see whether there really is concerted action, that is, whether a larger number of heads of state and government will not be there.
"In that case, the Olympics would certainly be damaged," he continues, "and the Chinese government would not achieve what it actually hoped to gain from these Games: a positive presentation and thus, above all, stronger support of the country."
Previous boycotts of sporting events There is a long tradition of boycotts and threats of boycotts at Olympic Games for political reasons. Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland, for example, did not participate in the 1956 Summer Games in Melbourne in protest against the invasion of Hungary by Warsaw Pact troops.
In the 1960s and 70s, sub-Saharan African countries repeatedly prevented the then-apartheid states of South Africa and Rhodesia from competing with threats of boycotts.
Following Russia's occupation of Afghanistan at the end of 1979, 42 countries boycotted the 1980 Games in Moscow. Russia and 19 other countries returned the favor four years later by staying away from the Los Angeles Games.
In 1988, North Korea sent no athletes to the Games in the South Korean capital of Seoul, with five other countries joining in. There were also calls to boycott the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing because of human rights violations in Tibet, but little actual action came from those appeals.
How effective is a diplomatic boycott? By comparison, a diplomatic boycott, sometimes called the politician boycott, seems like a "light" version of not sending participants to the Olympics, but only at first glance.
"In the end, depending on the intensity of this boycott, the major event may well be damaged to a certain degree," sports policy expert Mittag tells DW.
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Post by Admin on Nov 29, 2021 21:28:04 GMT
Representatives from more than 70 countries have attended a diplomatic briefing held by organisers of the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing. Beijing 2022 presented updates to the meeting in the Chinese capital, which also involved International Olympic Committee (IOC) and National Olympic Committee officials. It took place at a time when several countries, including the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia, are considering a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics because of human rights concerns in China. Officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented on the international dignitary programme covering arrival and departure, accommodation, transport and security for visiting state leaders and Sports Ministers during the Games at the briefing. It is not yet clear how many heads of state will attend the Games, set to open on February 4, due to the possible diplomatic boycott by several nations. Russian President Vladimir Putin has already accepted an invitation to the Opening Ceremony, however. US President Joe Biden admitted publicly for the first time earlier this month that America was seriously considering a diplomatic boycott. Accusations of serious human rights violations in China, such as "clear and convincing" evidence of the Government’s genocide against its Uyghur Muslim population are not new, but the recent disappearance of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai has put a new focus on the authoritarian regime. Venue readiness, competition operation, COVID-19 protocols and legacy were also discussed during the Beijing 2022 briefing. "It's a very long and complicated journey, not only for the intrinsic difficulties of organising the Winter Games, but also having to organise that in a COVID-ridden environment," said IOC Coordination Commission chairman Juan Antonio Samaranch. "But I'm very proud to inform you that we are fully confident to deliver extraordinary Games in February. "But in order to be excellent, first of all, they have to be safe. "We are very confident in the health secure measures taken by our hosts in Beijing with the expert support from the World Health Organization that the Games will be safe."
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Post by Admin on Dec 6, 2021 4:43:10 GMT
President Joe Biden is expected to announce that the United States will issue a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics over human rights abuses in China, according to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. The announcement is expected to come this week. Biden said last month, days after he virtually met with China’s leader Xi Jinping, that the United States was considering such a boycott. The Olympics didn’t come up in that meeting, but Biden did discuss human rights abuses in the country. Among other things, China is accused of committing crimes against humanity against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang. The Biden administration and former President Donald Trump's administration referred to China's treatment of Uyghurs — which includes allegations of forced mass sterilization, forced labor and separating families — as “genocide.” There have been growing calls throughout the United States and across the world to boycott the games for numerous reasons. Several activists held a demonstration at the Acropolis monument in Athens, in October during the traditional torch-lighting ceremony. China has been in the middle of several controversies throughout the sports world in recent years, too. Former Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted his support for Hong Kong in 2019, which sparked a massive controversy, and Enes Kanter Freedom has been calling out issues in China while playing with the Boston Celtics this season. Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai went missing earlier this year, too, after she alleged that a high-ranking Chinese politician had coerced her into sex. The International Olympic Committee has drawn harsh criticism for its handling of Shuai’s disappearance, and the Women’s Tennis Association suspended all tournaments in China. The United States will announce a doplomatic boycott of the 2022 Olympics in Beijing. (Noel Celis/AFP/Getty Images) What is a diplomatic boycott, and how would it impact athletes? The diplomatic boycott won’t impact any United States athletes at the upcoming Winter Games in Beijing. All athletes who make the trip will still be allowed to compete.
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Post by Admin on Dec 6, 2021 19:48:22 GMT
The U.S. on Monday announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, a move that had garnered bipartisan support from critics of China’s human rights record. While U.S. athletes will still participate, President Joe Biden’s administration will not send any official representation to the games, given China’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters. Psaki was referring to China’s reported treatment of Uighur Muslims in that northwestern territory, which has been declared a genocide both by Biden and the administration of former President Donald Trump. “The athletes on Team USA have our full support. We will be behind them 100 percent as we cheer them on from home. We will not be contributing to the fanfare of the games,” Psaki said. “U.S. diplomatic or official representation would treat these games as business as usual in the face of the [People’s Republic of China’s] egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang, and we simply can’t do that,” she said. “We will continue to take actions to advance human rights in China and beyond,” she said. The move, which was expected, was preemptively criticized earlier Monday by China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian. “It is a travesty of the Olympic spirit, it is political provocation, and an offense to the 1.4 billion Chinese people” he said, according to a translation of his remarks. “If the U.S. is insistent on going down the wrong path, China will take necessary and resolute countermeasures,” Zhao said. The Chinese government under President Xi Jinping has been condemned by dozens of countries over its actions in Xinjiang, as well as its crackdown against pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong in 2019 and 2020.
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