MOSCOW, January 20. /TASS/. The West is creating another ‘dirty intrigue’ around the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing by filling the media space with invented problems, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.
"Our planet is being tested by a pandemic, it tries to find an answer to how to survive and come up with effective means of fighting against new strains of the novel coronavirus," she said speaking at a news briefing. "At this precise moment, instead of using the positive agenda for the sake of giving hope to many people, who are desperate for it, another terrible dirty intrigue regarding the Olympic Games is being concocted."
According to the diplomat, Western countries are asking "which official delegations will join the boycott and which will travel to China" instead of filling the media space with positive news.
Zakharova noted that the organization of sports events in the countries, which are not members of the collective West, was always complicated.
"This is not the first time. It has always been this way," she continued. "Everything is normal more or less with the Olympic Games organized on the territories of the countries of this bloc’s philosophy. Everything is wonderful and there are no problems at all with the abuse of human rights, humanitarian issues, and corruption."
"However, when it goes to the organization of large-scale sports events in countries that are not part of the bloc ring and are not members of the collective West, various issues and questions immediately emerge and they are either simply over-exaggerated or made up, or combined by mixing real problems with intentionally mythologized ones."
On December 6, 2021, Washington announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics, saying that no US officials would attend the Games. The Biden administration later informed its allies and partners overseas of the move, leaving them the right to decide for themselves on attending the Beijing Olympics.
Demands for boycotting the Beijing Winter Olympics were earlier voiced by politicians from Canada, Norway, and the United States as well as by representatives of about 200 human rights organizations around the globe over China’s alleged human rights abuses in the Xinjiang autonomous region.
In response, China slammed the US decision as a political ploy that ran counter to the Olympic Charter and vowed to take retaliatory measures. Australia and Japan joined the US diplomatic boycott of the Games. New Zealand, in turn, said that its officials would not travel to Beijing due to the coronavirus pandemic.
2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing
The 2022 Winter Olympic Games in the Chinese capital of Beijing are scheduled to be held from February 4-20, while the Paralympic Winter Games will be held on March 4-13.
During the 128th IOC session in Kuala Lumpur on July 31, 2015, Beijing was chosen to host the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games making the Chinese capital the first city ever to host both the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games (in 2008) as well as the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games (in 2022).
Beijing won the right to host the 2022 Olympics and Paralympics in a tight race, beating Kazakhstan’s Almaty in 2015, by chalking up 44 votes against its rival’s 40.