Society for Threatened Peoples calls for the Olympic Torch Relay to be ended!

In an open letter to the President of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) accused the IOC on Tuesday of making itself the mouth-piece of Chinese propaganda. "With the charge of the high-ranking IOC representative Kevan Gosper that the demonstrators in London and Paris had displayed "hatred of China” the IOC has transgressed the border of tastelessness”, said the GfbV Asia correspondent, Ulrich Delius. "Crass slander of this kind we normally expect from the spokespeople of the Chinese government.”

The demonstrators were fully aware of the difference between the Han-Chinese and the instrumentalising of the Olympic Games by the Chinese government. The protests are not aimed at damning China. It is rather a matter of bringing China to responsible policies in accord with the Chinese laws and international human rights conventions signed by the People’s Republic.

By keeping silent for four weeks on the persecution in Tibet and Xinjiang the IOC is mainly responsible for the tension in the atmosphere and the Olympic flame meeting so much resistance. The protests in Paris should have at last woken up the IOC to the fact that its policy of ignoring the severe violations of human rights in China had failed. It was clear right from the beginning of the preparations for the Games that there would be conflict on the question of human rights. Who then could expect that public opinion would take lying down the four-week silence of the IOC on the crushing of the disturbances in Tibet? Was it so surprising that the anger of many human rights workers should have increased in the face of the kowtow of the IOC before the Chinese leaders?

The GfbV made an express appeal to the IOC to break off the Olympic Torch Relay abroad and also in China. Abroad it is inviting protests from human rights workers, it is seriously damaging the Olympic movement and inland it is stirring up further ethnic conflicts. This applies not only for Tibet and the Chinese provinces populated by Tibetans, but also for neighbouring Xinjiang. In East Turkistan at the beginning of April at least 70 Muslim Uighurs were arrested at protests.