IOC President's visit to Hiroshima goes badly with the Japanese
IOC President Thomas Bach upon arriving for a meeting with Tokyo 2020 President Seiko Hashimoto on July 13, 2021 in Tokyo.
AP - Takashi Aoyama
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
The President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach is due to visit Hiroshima this Friday.
But its presence is very badly received by the Japanese.
Publicity
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With our correspondent in Tokyo,
Frédéric Charles
Thomas Bach goes to Hiroshima at the start of the Olympic truce when a majority of Japanese are still opposed to the holding of the Tokyo Games.
Its goal: to bring a message of peace to the world by linking the Olympic Games to the efforts of the city victim of the first nuclear bombardment in history so as not to forget the past.
Japanese civil rights activists have filed a complaint with authorities in Hiroshima Prefecture in an attempt to have his visit canceled.
According to these civil rights defenders, the presence of the IOC boss in Hiroshima would be a disgrace for the hibakushas, the survivors of the atomic bombing still alive.
The memory of the atomic bombings is fading, but many Japanese doubt that Thomas Bach's visit to Hiroshima could help to sustain it.
The IOC president is unpopular in Japan.
During his first public appearance, he compared the Japanese to the Chinese.
"
Thomas Bach is in Tokyo, but in his mind, he is already in Beijing where the next Winter Olympics are to take place
," exclaims a commentator on a television channel.
On the same day, IOC Vice-President John Coates is due to visit Nagasaki, the second atomized Japanese city.
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See also: In Tokyo, the Olympics are preparing between a state of health emergency and hot weather
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