Olympics unites entire world, keep politics out: IOC chief

Amid calls for the boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics that is due to held in China, over human rights issues, Games chief Thomas Bach said politics should be kept out of the Games otherwise it would become as divisive as other areas of the society. 

“The Olympic Games are the only event that unites the entire world in peaceful competition,” the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said. Thomas Bach added that the Olympics movement needs to be kept neutral. In a video message to the UN Human Rights Council, he said Games cannot be expected to solve civil liberties issues that politics had failed to fix.

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“Everybody respects the same rules, standing together in solidarity. This universality and inclusiveness that define the Olympic Games require us at the IOC to be politically neutral,” he said. 

Before this, China had hosted the Summer Olympics in 2008. 

Xi Jinping-led China is facing scrutiny and boycott calls over human rights issues that include repression, mass internment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, and the clampdown of freedom in Hong Kong.  

“We cannot solve human rights issues which generations of politicians were unable to solve,” Thomas Bach said.

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However, the IOC chief added that the Olympic charter guarantees equal rights such as non-discrimination, freedom of the press and respect for labour rights standards, during the Games. 

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics is due to start on July 23. It was postponed from last year in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Olympics committee on Friday released guidelines on political protests at the Games and said that the athletes would be allowed to express their views before and after competing but not on the podium. 

This means competitors are now allowed to take the knee to highlight racial injustice, or speak to the media and post online about their views, or wear clothing with a protest slogan at a press conference, AFP reported.