BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s triple Olympic medallist Erik Lesser mentioned it was the Worldwide Olympic Committee – and never athletes – who ought to face any criticism over Beijing being given the fitting to host the winter Olympics regardless of China’s human rights file.
Lesser, who received workforce and particular person silver in biathlon on the 2014 Sochi Video games in addition to workforce bronze on the 2018 Pyeongchang Video games, mentioned athletes had been left within the lurch by the IOC.
“We at the moment are standing right here having to justify ourselves for the Olympic Video games (being held) in a rustic the place human rights are violated. So in flip now we have to be extra crucial about what Thomas Bach as president of the IOC didn’t obtain,” he instructed the Muenchner Merkur newspaper.
Rights teams have lengthy criticised the IOC for awarding the Video games to China for a second time, after human rights circumstances failed to enhance following the 2008 Beijing summer season Olympics, in accordance with the teams.
The IOC has mentioned human rights shall be protected for all Video games contributors as a part of the host contract, however it has mentioned it doesn’t have the ability or mandate to vary legal guidelines or intrude with a sovereign state.
Lesser mentioned that didn’t forestall athletes dealing with criticism that ought to as a substitute be directed on the IOC.
“Us athletes are at all times requested about that earlier than the Video games. We’ve to contemplate the truth that now we have to take a place on points that the IOC ought to have cleared up years in the past,” Lesser, a part of Germany’s biathlon workforce for Beijing, instructed the paper.
The Beijing Video games have been marred in controversy over the previous 12 months, and the USA and different governments have introduced a diplomatic boycott of the occasion for what it says are rights abuses in opposition to Uyghurs and different Muslim minority teams within the Xinjiang area.
China denies wrongdoing in Xinjiang and says camps for Uyghurs present vocational coaching and curb non secular extremism.
(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; Enhancing by Hugh Lawson)
Supply: KFGO
