One year from now, on February 4, 2022, the Olympic Winter Games will begin. They will be carried out in Beijing and the surrounding region. Against this background, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) demanded a clear statement of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) regarding the ruthless assimilation policy of the Chinese government towards ethnic and religious minorities. The Chinese Communist Party will once again use the major sporting event to present itself as international and cosmopolitan – but will at the same time put even more pressure on the ethnic groups of the Uyghurs, the Kazakhs, and the Kyrgyz. "In the course of the 2008 Summer Games, the government had already shown that, contrary to its own statements, it does not intend to respect the rights of the Chines people or to do more to protect these rights," stated Jasna Causevic, STP expert on genocide prevention and the Responsibility to Protect. "It would be fatal if the IOC were to once again approve of this behavior by ignoring China's policy of oppression."

Back in 2008, the IOC did not express any criticism regarding the numerous human rights violations, including those in Tibet. "Instead, IOC President Thomas Bach honored State and Party Leader Xi Jinping with the Olympic Order in 2013. Two years later, China won the bid to host the 2022 Winter Games," Causevic criticized. "The Muslim nationalities in the Xinjiang region have since been subjected to an unprecedented repressive regime including re-education camps, forced labor, family separations, and the destruction of religious sites." Nonetheless, the IOC continues to praise the Chinese state to this day. "Given the massive human rights violations in Xinjiang, this appeasement behavior cannot be justified," Causevic said. "Due to its status as a UN-registered non-governmental organization, the IOC is bound by the 1948 Anti-Genocide Convention. The least Thomas Bach could do is to respect this convention and call cultural genocide what it is."

One of the fundamental principles of the Olympic Charter is that discrimination is not accepted: "Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion,
politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement." Apparently, however, this longer seems to be of importance to the IOC – and it is ignoring its own history: Between 1964 and 1988, for instance, South Africa was barred from participating in the Olympic Games because of its apartheid policies.