IOC Proposes COVID-19 Warning For Protest Zones At Beijing Olympics

Illustration - Ice hockey field testing activity at Wukesong Sports Center (Twitter @Beijing2022)

JAKARTA - The head of the coordinating committee for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said every official protest zones at the Beijing Winter Olympics would rely on measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 when the Games take place in February.

Human rights activists have voiced protests against the February 4-20 Olympics, over China's treatment of the Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the northwest. China denies accusations of crimes against humanity and genocide.

At the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, three deliberately created official demonstration zones were set up in public parks even though no one saw the protests.

The chairman of the IOC's coordinating commission for Beijing 2022, Juan Antonio Samaranch, said that the right to protest was already in the host city's contract.

"It is a strict set of rules that we have to regulate the relationship between ourselves and the organizing committee, with one caveat at this stage. There is COVID, and COVID is changing things", Samaranch said.

"We are working on enforcement for everything that is stated in the Olympic charter and that is said in the host city contract".

"But we have to put that under the very strict framework of COVID protection measures that are being laid down by public health authorities in China and internationally".

"So it's still in the process of how this required commitment will materialize. Again, it really depends on how COVID develops in China and the arenas at this time and as the Olympics take place".

International spectators are barred from attending the Olympics but, unlike this year's rescheduled Tokyo 2020 Olympics where all spectators are barred from attending due to the pandemic, residents will be allowed in.

IOC Sports Director Christophe Dubi, responding to a question on human rights, said that the Olympics needed to go ahead.

"This is what we do, we celebrate humanity. We build bridges. We bring different views together. And I say this may be what the world needs right now", Dubi said.

"We should not build walls, or build on the tensions that are already happening around the world... and all of us, including you, should be proud to be part of a movement that is doing this".