Tiananmen activist Wang Dan petitions for boycott of 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics
Exiled Chinese activist Wang Dan has launched a petition urging the international community to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, which 188 activists and scholars have signed.
Washington-based Wang, who first rose to prominence as a leader in the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests, said Beijing enforced a national security law in Hong Kong to suppress its pro-democracy camp, with almost all important democrats being remanded. Hong Kong has lost its special status and become a massive prison, he said.
The Chinese Communist Party also pushed forward genocidal policies in Xinjiang, threatened democratic Taiwan with force, conducted mass arrests of dissidents within its borders, and expanded its anti-democratic ideology overseas. Such a regime has fascist characteristics and does not deserve to hold a significant international sporting event like the Olympics, Wang said.
The actions of the Chinese Communist Party violate the core principles of the Olympics movement, such as diversity, equality and abiding by rules, Wang said. Letting Beijing hold the 2022 Winter Olympics would make the regime even more confident, do further harm to human rights within China, as well as challenge the democratic development of the world, he said.
Hosting the Olympics was intended to consolidate the regime’s legitimacy, not to benefit the people, Wang said. China should earn respect on the basis of following universal values, and countries should boycott the 2022 Olympics until China improves its human rights record, he said.
Signatories included exiled Chinese activists Wu’er Kaixi, Wang Juntao, Li Hengqing and Hu Ping. Foreign scholars such as French sinologist Jean-Philippe Beja also signed.
Click
here for Chinese version
---------------------------------
Apple Daily’s all-new English Edition is now available on the mobile app:
bit.ly/2yMMfQETo download the latest version,
Or search Appledaily in App Store or Google Play