Tibetans march on Swiss-based IOC to protest Beijing Games

LAUSANNE, Switzerland : Hundreds of Tibetan activists marched on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Thursday, a day before Beijing 2022 opens, accusing the Swiss-based organisation of complicity in "atrocities" committed against ethnic minorities in China.

Hours earlier, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that the Beijing Olympics will be streamlined, safe and splendid, even as IOC President Thomas Bach decried boycott ghosts "rearing their ugly heads again" over human rights concerns.

The United States, Britain and some other allied countries have staged a diplomatic boycott of the Games over those concerns.

"Today here we are gathered, Tibetans from at least eight different countries in Europe, in front of the IOC building to protest against IOC awarding the Winter Olympics 2022 to the Beijing government," Karma Choekyi, head of the Tibetan Community of Switzerland and Liechtenstein, told Reuters.

She said more than 150 Tibetans had self-immolated after the 2008 Beijing Summer Games because of "much repression in Tibet".

"So to award yet again the Winter Olympics 2022 to Beijing means the IOC has not taken (account) of gross human rights violations by the Chinese regime on the people of Tibet, east Turkistan (Xinjiang), southern Mongolia and even the fragile democracy in Hong Kong," she said.

They were presenting to IOC security staff a petition signed by the presidents of 10 Tibetan communities in Europe.

"In Tibet there are no human rights and genocide is destroying the culture. That is why we came to stop the Beijing 2022," Lob Sang, a 36-year-old man born in Tibet who said he has lived as a refugee in the Netherlands since 2013, told Reuters.

The man, who declined to give his family name, said: "I have family in