As the Tokyo Olympics wrap up, thanks to the COVID-19 delay, the Beijing Winter Olympics are just a year away. There is no way to sugarcoat this: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Olympic athletes will be de facto accomplices in police brutality if they take part in the Beijing Olympics. The holding of the 2022 Beijing Olympics not only condones an ongoing genocide—it invites further repression for some of China’s most oppressed populations.
The complicity of the IOC in supporting authoritarian regimes goes back a long way—and the last Olympics in Beijing were controversial enough. The 2008 Summer Olympics began only months after the 49th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising, observed every March to mark a major Tibetan revolt against Chinese occupation. In 2008, spurred by the Olympics, what began as a springtime protest snowballed into the largest and longest Tibetan protest in 20 years.
