Tokyo: Protestors demonstrate against human rights abuses by China, calls to boycott 2022 Beijing Olympics

Tokyo [Japan], July 19 (ANI): A group of protestors on Monday including Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, and human rights defenders from Hong Kong, Japan and China demonstrated against the human rights abuses by Beijing and called upon the world community to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games.

More than 30 persons protested for over an hour outside the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo today. The activists and concerned citizens highlighted that there were only 200 days to go for what they called the ‘Genocide Olympics’. They pleaded for the world to act and save the lives of ethnic minorities inside mainland China, as also the political and civil rights of the people of Hong Kong.

The protestors pointed out that while Japan would be conducting the beautiful Olympics in four days (from 23 July), China will hold its Genocide Olympics after 200 days. They also submitted a memorandum to the Chinese Embassy, urging China to stop its human rights violations. The protestors gathered under the banner of the ‘Executive Committee Protesting the Holding of the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games’.

Uyghurs make up around 45 per cent of the population in China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region and have long been facing cultural, religious and economic discrimination. Up to one million people, or about 7 per cent of the Muslim population in Xinjiang, have been incarcerated in an expanding network of “political re-education” camps, according to United States officials and United Nations experts.

While in Tibet, the Chinese authorities are gearing up for increased control over Tibetan Buddhism, where monasteries are forbidden to give traditional monastic education which forms an integral part of Tibetan Buddhism.

Monks and nuns are, instead, subjected to regular “patriotic education” and other political campaigns that are fundamentally against the basic tenets of Tibetan Buddhism. (ANI)