China’s unrelenting crackdown across China, Tibet, East Turkestan, Southern Mongolia and Hong Kong has deepened under President Xi Jinping.

• Tibet has amongst the tightest restrictions in the world and long been used as China’s laboratory for repression; a place where the Chinese authorities have tested, and sought to perfect, systems of mass surveillance and control – and to create the ultimate police state.

• They don’t let Tibetans out. Don’t give them passports. They pursue and arrest, torture and kill, and even shoot Tibetans when they try to escape. They punish the families and communities they leave behind.

• Millions of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims are arbitrarily detained in massive “re-education camps” enduring forced labor, inhuman treatment, and political indoctrination. Chinese authorities are carrying out forced sterilisations of women in an apparent campaign to curb the growth of Muslim Uyghurs population and while others are subjected to.
• In Hong Kong the Chinese government unleashed a crushing crackdown on freedoms and democracy. XXX or pro-democracy activists have been arrested including Joshua Wong and 12 young Hongkongers – aged 16 to 33 – accused of attempting to flee.
• Southern Mongolian culture and language is under attack and children are being deprived of their right to speak their mother tongue, as the Chinese government intensifies its crackdown on any and all cultural differences.

People from every walk of life are targeted by China’s crackdown; human rights defenders, journalists, environment activists, students, doctors, and lawyers.

Ahead of the 2008 Beijing Games we were told by the IOC we see huge changes in the rights of those living under China’s rule. The reality couldn’t have been further from the truth.

In 2008, it would have been hard to imagine how the situation could get any worse.

But that is exactly what has happened.

Rather than act as a catalyst for positive change, allowing China to host another Olympics will only further legitimise the current crackdown and serve as a congratulations for the human rights crisis.

By going ahead with Beijing 2022 – despite the well known and damaging consequences of doing so – the IOC is sending a clear message that they are willing to ignore that current climate of repression. With a message of ‘business as usual,” China gets to continue violating human rights, without any consequences.

One of the main ways that theIOC justified its decision to award Beijing the 2008 Games was by claiming that human rights would be improved. In reality, the exact opposite happened.

During the 2008 Games, Chinese authorities repeatedly violated the very human rights they had pledged to uphold in order to win the right to host that event, including by censoring the media and the internet, arbitrarily arresting journalists, and abusing the rights of workers.

Now, over 14 years later, the human rights situation in the country couldn’t be worse and the IOC is again making the false claim that the Games will act as a catalyst for human rights improvements; repeating the very same mistakes they made in 2008.

China is saying the same. The Beijing Olympic Committee  has promised that the 2022 Games will be “open” and “inclusive,” and will create a “harmonious world.” Surely the fact that China continues to jail more journalists than any other country in the world makes it difficult to understand exactly how these Games will be characterised by a spirit of ‘openness’?