Keep politics out of the Games: Oly chief Bach

Olympics chief Thomas Bach. Pic/AFP

Olympics chief Thomas Bach pleaded on Wednesday for politics to be kept out of the Games, saying they would otherwise become as divisive as other areas of society.

The Olympic movement needs to be kept neutral and cannot be expected to solve civil liberties issues that politics had failed to fix, Bach said in a video message to the UN Human Rights Council. "The Olympic Games are the only event that unites the entire world in peaceful competition," the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said.

"Everybody respects the same rules, standing together in solidarity. This universality and inclusiveness that define the Olympic Games require us at the IOC to be politically neutral."

China, which will host the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing next February, is facing scrutiny and boycott calls over several rights issues including the mass internment and other repression of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang and the clampdown on freedoms in Hong Kong. Beijing has already hosted the 2008 summer Olympics. "We have neither the mandate nor the capability to change laws of sovereign countries. We cannot solve human rights issues which generations of politicians were unable to solve," said Bach.

But, he said, the Olympic charter guaranteed equal rights for everyone during the Games, such as non-discrimination, freedom of the press and respect for labour rights standards.

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