Hong Kong (AFP)

The 2022 Gay Games are postponed by a year, organizers said on Wednesday, officially citing coronavirus-related travel restrictions in Hong Kong, the city chosen to host the event.

Hong Kong continues to apply particularly strict rules related to the Covid requiring foreign visitors between one and three weeks of quarantine in a hotel, which keeps the city largely cut off from the rest of the world.

"The unpredictable progression of Covid variants and the corresponding travel restrictions continue to make it difficult for participants from around the world to make plans to travel to Hong Kong," Dennis Philipse, Gay Games Hong Kong co-chair, said on Wednesday in a statement. communicated.

Modeled on the Olympic Games, the Gay Games are held every four years and bring together LGBTQ and heterosexual athletes to promote a message of inclusion and equal rights.

Around 12,000 participants from more than 100 countries were expected for the event, scheduled for November 2022.

Hong Kong was ahead of more than a dozen other cities to host the Games, which for the first time were to be held in Asia.

But even before the announcement of this postponement, the Gay Games appeared threatened both by the coronavirus but also by the political turbulence in Hong Kong, China having decided to give a more authoritarian turn to the financial center.

Last month, AFP revealed that Taiwan would not send a delegation to the Gay Games for fear that the athletes would be arrested under Hong Kong's new national security law.

Many of the Hong Kong activists jailed for taking part in the democratic protest movement are prominent LGTBQ activists.

And some pro-Beijing politicians had made homophobic comments about the Games or presented them as a threat to national security.

Hong Kong has one of the worst anti-Covid vaccination rates among industrialized countries, especially among the elderly, and authorities have indicated that they intend to continue their "zero Covid" strategy and that they will prioritize travel with mainland China before relaxing the rules for travel to the rest of the world.

Although some representatives had pleaded in favor of the Gay Games to maintain "Hong Kong's overall image as a cosmopolitan and forward-looking city", the Hong Kong government had shown rather lukewarm support for the event, the organizers recently complained of having difficulty reserving venues.

© 2021 AFP