Olympic Charta must be changed – No muzzle for athletes!

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) called today for as change of the Olympic Charta to allow athletes to be able to express without fear of reprisals their protest against violations of human rights in China during the Olympic Games in Peking. "The International Olympic Committee must not now hide its own mistakes by allowing a massive restriction of their freedom of speech”, said the GfbV Asia expert, Ulrich Delius. "If a disregard for the respect for human rights is involved in the allocation of the Olympiad the door is left wide open for sportsmen and women to be prevented from expressing their concern about violations of human rights and from even being excluded from the Games”.

The IOC emphasised again on Sunday at the beginning of a week-long conference in Peking the choice of the Chinese capital as the site for conducting the Olympic Games 2008. At the same time the officials emphasised that carrying an armband or headband would be considered as an infringement of Rule 51 of the Olympic Games and would draw sanctions.

"It is totally unrealistic and borders on cynicism for the IOC to order reports on the quality of the air in Peking, yet totally ignores the dreadful human rights situation for months”, said Delius. "It is not only the bad air which steals the chance of people to breathe, but the continuing repression”. So it does not help very much if the IOC President, Jacques Rogge now suddenly discovers his heart for the Tibetans and expresses his concern for the situation in the native country of the Dalai Lama. "We would have expected a reaction of this kind four weeks ago at the outset of the bloody crushing of the protests in Tibet when Chinese military convoys drove into Lhasa.”

Before the start of the Olympiad China has increased its persecution not only in Tibet but also in neighbouring Xinjiang (East Turkistan) and arrested hundreds of Falun-Gong supporters, criticised Delius. "The fact that the head of the IOC Coordination Commission, Hein Verbruggen, declared that the Chinese hosts had earned a "gold medal for their achievement” is a blow in the face for the several thousand people who have been compulsorily moved in Peking, whose houses were demolished to make way for the sports arena.”