Reuters reports that the coronavirus pandemic won’t be stopping the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics:
LAUSANNE, Switzerland (Reuters) – The International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Tuesday gave further unequivocal backing to this summer’s Tokyo Olympics, urging athletes to prepare “full steam” despite the coronavirus threat.
“We are preparing for a successful Olympic Games, Tokyo 2020,” IOC head Thomas Bach said at an executive board meeting to discuss the July 24-Aug. 9 sporting extravaganza.
Earlier on Tuesday, Japan’s Olympics minister Seiko Hashimoto had said that details within Tokyo’s contract with the IOC “could be interpreted as allowing a postponement” until the end of the year. [[War Room note: it isn’t clear if COVID-19 will return in a seasonal manner like the flu, but many experts predict it might.]]
That host city contract states that one of several triggers which would allow the IOC to withdraw the Games from Tokyo would be if “the Games are not celebrated during the year 2020”.
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Meanwhile, explosive must-read allegations from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) that China’s Communist Party is systematically using Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities for forced labor may lead to an intensified push for an international boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.
Michael Mazza, writing in November in the Los Angeles Times (before the latest bombshell revealations), makes the case for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics:
The evidence of abuses in the Chinese region of Xinjiang has been mounting over the past year. Testimony from former detainees, satellite imagery and publicly available local government documentation have all pointed to the building of concentration camps, the detention of a million or more Uighurs and other Muslim minorities and rampant abuses against the detained, including torture and sexual violence. Conditions outside the camps are not much better, with a security apparatus that is oppressive and omnipresent.
The recent leak of the Xinjiang Papers — more than 400 pages of internal Chinese government documents — provide proof that China’s leaders are directly responsible for the abuses in Xinjiang. President Xi Jinping undoubtedly set the direction for that policy, with disastrous consequences for China’s Muslims.
READ THE FULL OP-ED AT THE LA TIMES
China, for it’s part, is sending forcing its workers back to construction sites… something that’s probably inadvisable in the midst of a global pandemic that started in China. Chinese state propaganda Xinhua reports the following:
BEIJING, March 3 (Xinhua) — The construction of 24 venues in two competition areas including the National Alpine Skiing Center, the National Speed Skating Hall, and Yanqing Winter Olympic Village has gotten back underway, with 96 percent of workers back on site, the Beijing Major Projects Construction Headquarters Office confirmed on Tuesday.
To meet the requirements of Beijing’s epidemic prevention and control while resuming work, all units participating in the construction of the Beijing Winter Olympic projects have established a joint working mechanism with the local government and health/epidemic prevention departments.
According to the construction plan, all competition venues in downtown Beijing and Yanqing will be completed by the end of 2020.
What’s the rush, China?
