London lawyer Michael Polak submits a formal written complaint to the International Olympic Committee.
by Marco Respinti
China’s record on human rights and religious liberty is so low that the simple idea of Beijing hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics is an insult to intelligence, and an international partnership in crime. But this is what will inexorably happen unless the tide suddenly reverses.
Some are convinced that it is not too late. It may even be the case that this is the right time to act, given the consistent international denunciation of the crimes perpetrated by the CCP. This is the opinion of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), based in Munich, Germany, and chaired by Mr. Dolkun Isa.
WUC has instructed an international human rights barrister, Mr. Michael Polak, of London’s Church Court Chambers and head of Lawyers for Uyghur Rights, to submit a formal written complaint to the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s Ethics Commission through the Ethics and Compliance Office. IOC is in fact the only body which can reverse the tide. A formal written complaint is something to which IOC is required to respond.
The complaint states that “IOC, its Executive Board, and IOC President Thomas Bach have acted in breach of the Olympic Charter by failing to reconsider holding the 2022 Olympics in Beijing following verifiable evidence of genocide and crimes against humanity taking place against the Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims by the People’s Republic of China.”
The complaint is accompanied by a report published in June 2020 and updated in late July by the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation and authored by Dr. Adrian Zenz, the renown independent German expert on the cultural and ethnic genocide against the Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in China, titled “Sterilizations, IUDs, and Mandatory Birth Control: The CCP’s Campaign to Suppress Uyghur Birthrates in Xinjiang.”
For the WUC, the report confirms “that not only will holding the Olympic in Beijing be seen as support for the extreme repression suffered by the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, but that given the opaque nature of the supply chains in China, especially in regards to textiles and technology, it is likely that the IOC will be directly involved in the international crimes committed against the Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim people.” The focus point here is that “forced transport and use of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims as slave labor” is “widely documented.” “It will be impossible for the IOC to ensure that the technology used in Olympic competitions and the hosting of the Games and the textiles used for Olympic merchandise are not tainted by the immense pain of those transported thousands of miles across China to be forced to work in factories because of their religion and race.”
Many are the crimes committed daily by the CCP, and many are the ethnic and religious groups that suffer the repression of the regime. If the WUC’s call to IOC is successful, all persecuted groups will benefit from it. If other persecuted groups launch similar initiatives, WUC’s action will be strengthened.
