FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 28 JANUARY 2022
***Photos and videos of today’s protests are available at: https://bit.ly/SFTBostonMedia
Contact:
Chris Choi | +1 (617) 487-1787 | Chris.c.0527@gmail.com (English/Cantonese)
Maya Mitalipova | +1 (617) 777-4692 | Mitalipova@gmail.com (English/Uyghur)
Tsering Yangchen | +1 (917) 963-2245 | tyangchen@college.harvard.edu (English/Tibetan)
Howard Fass | +1 (978) 223-0260 | Howardfass108@gmail.com (English)
BOSTON—With just one week to go until the Winter Olympic Games open in Beijing, Tibetan, Uyghur, Hong Konger, and Taiwanese activists protested outside NBC’s Boston headquarters today, condemning the official US broadcaster of the Olympics for helping China coverup its human rights atrocities. Activists called on NBC to drop their broadcasting deal and urged the public to boycott NBC’s broadcast and not to watch the Games. Today marks the one-week countdown to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and the start of a Global Week of Action organized by human rights groups targeting the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the Chinese government, and all corporations involved in what activists are calling the ‘Genocide Games’.
For the past year, a coalition of Boston-based human rights organizations have repeatedly tried to engage NBC-Boston in a dialogue on the massive and escalating crisis of repression being carried out by the Chinese government in Tibet, East Turkistan (Xinjiang), Hong Kong and China itself. They have sent letters and staged protests, but have received no response from the corporation. The activists said the protest at NBC’s Boston office in Needham Heights today was a way to remind NBC leadership and staff that the Chinese Communist Party is using the Olympics to cover up its human rights atrocities and to remind them of their human rights obligations as a news organization. At the same time, they are imploring the public not to watch the Genocide Games. Activists chanted slogans and read statements outside the NBC building and also staged political theater skits to drive home their point that by broadcasting China’s Olympic Games, NBC will be complicit in “sports-washing” of genocide, occupation, and crimes against humanity.
Today’s protest was part of the Global Week of Action against the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. Go to www.NoBeijing2022.org to learn more.
Tsering Yangchen, President of Students for a Free Tibet Boston, said:
“The Chinese Communist Party does not deserve the honor of hosting the Olympic Games nor should they be given a platform to sportswash their heinous crimes against humanity. China is right now engaged in a massive escalating campaign of repression against the Tibetan people and as Tibetan youth leaders, we ask you to stand alongside us in our fight to build a world where people are put before profit and genocide is not tolerated.”
Munawwar Abdullah, Boston Uyghur Association, said:
“Staying blind to genocide just to spotlight the Winter Olympics shows an incredible lack of integrity and a complete disregard for humanity. By continuing to partner with and support China in hosting the Beijing Olympic Games, NBC makes even more Americans complicit in the genocide of Uyghurs and the oppression of millions of people by the Chinese Communist Party.”
Cheuk On Ko, President of Hong Kong Social Action Movements in Boston, said:
“NBC knows what is happening in Tibet, East Turkestan, Southern Mongolia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, but instead of dropping the broadcasting deal for the Beijing Winter Olympics, NBC has partnered with TikTok – a company that has worked with Chinese government propaganda offices to promote Beijing’s false narrative about the Uyghur genocide. NBC must do the right thing – support the universal values and human rights that Americans support – and drop its Olympic broadcasting deal.”
Howard Fass, President of Formosan Association for Public Affairs MA said:
“The future of Taiwan belongs to the 24-million Taiwanese who call their island nation home and not to the brutal dictatorship in Beijing that wants to colonize and enslave them. By airing the Genocide Games, NBC is telling the millions of people whose lives are impacted by Chinese imperialism that their suffering doesn’t matter. We must all take a stand up against CCP totalitarianism and say no to Beijing 2022!”
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