FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 11 December 2021
For additional updates, visual requests, and interviews:
Jacob Kessler, Students for a Free Tibet, +1516-776-6472, Jacob@studentsforafreetibet.org
Tashi Shitsetsang, Tibetan Youth Association in Europe, +41 76 320 91 48, t.shitsetsang@vtje.org
***Photos available at https://bit.ly/TYAEMedia (Source: Tibetan Youth Association in Europe); interviews with action participants and movement leaders on request
TIBETAN YOUTH ACTIVISTS DEMAND NO MORE GENOCIDE GAMES
HAPPENING NOW: LAUSANNE – As the International Olympic Committee (IOC) gathers at its headquarters for the annual Olympic Summit, over a dozen members of the Tibetan Youth Association in Europe (TYAE) and Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) are staging a peaceful sit-in and banner drop at the IOC headquarters, known as the Olympic House. The activists are demanding a global boycott of Beijing 2022, also dubbed the Genocide Games, due to China’s sportswashing of genocide and crimes against humanity and IOC President Thomas Bach’s failure to uphold the human rights of Tibetans, Uyghurs, Hong Kongers, and Southern Mongolians. As of 9:46 Swiss time, activists are still inside the IOC building. Meanwhile, Thomas Bach and key members of the Olympic Committee are discussing plans for Beijing 2022.
At around 9:30 AM Swiss time, 8 activists entered the IOC headquarters in Lausanne. As they all began chanting, 5 of the young Tibetans commenced a sit-in, locking down to one another in solidarity.
As the sit-in was happening inside the building, outside the building youth activists staged a banner drop and protest actions of their own. At the iconic Olympic rings outside the IOC headquarters, two Tibetan young people chained themselves to the structure, demanding the IOC end their complicity in China’s human rights violations. In addition, two activists also unfurled a banner over the entryway to the building reading, “No Beijing 2022.”
At 9:44 Swiss time, police arrived at the scene.
Tenzing Dhokhar, Campaigns Director of TYAE, is currently inside the IOC headquarters:
“Despite mounting international criticism of the IOC and China, the Chinese regime’s human rights abuses in Tibet, East Turkestan, and Hong Kong continue unabated. By collaborating with China, the IOC is making itself an accomplice of the Chinese Communist Party’s crimes, which will be sports-washed by the Beijing Olympics. Tibetans demand a boycott of Beijing 2022!”
Tenzin Kunchok, 24-year old Tibetan student activist, currently staging a sit-in inside the Olympic House:
“The IOC has failed human rights. To allow China to host the Olympic Games despite the CCP’s violence against women, ranging from the silencing of Peng Shuai, to the use of rape as a form of torture against Uyghur women, or the religious persecution of countless Tibetan nuns, the IOC has declared that the CCP’s treatment of women is acceptable. As a woman, I am horrified to see the CCP not only ignore Peng Shuai’s story but even contribute to her pain by silencing her. We ask the world to support Peng Shuai as well as the countless other women who are currently being silenced by the CCP by boycotting Beijing 2022.”
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