"Boycott Beijing 2022": pro-Tibet activists arrested in Greece before the flame is lit

Tibetan and Hong Kong activists have called for a boycott of the Beijing Olympic Winter Games in 2022 in several protests around the world.

Here, in Lausanne, June 23, 2021. © Fabrice Coffrini, AFP

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

The traditional ceremony of lighting the Olympic flame takes place this Monday, October 18 in Greece, the first symbolic step in view of the 24th Olympic Winter Games, scheduled for Beijing in February 2022. But this Sunday, October 17, three foreign activists pro Tibet, who called for a boycott of these games organized by China on the site of the Acropolis of Athens, were arrested by Greek police.

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With our correspondent in Athens,

Joël Bronner

The demonstration will not have lasted more than ten minutes.

In the Greek capital, three activists entered the Acropolis site, two young women and a man.

They then briefly unfurled a Tibetan flag along with the revolutionary Hong Kong flag, before chanting slogans calling

for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics in 2022

.

A New York-based organization

called " 

Students for a Free Tibet

 " said in a statement

that the two Americans, one from Tibet and the other from Hong Kong, were indeed members of an opposition campaign. to the holding of the Olympic Games in China.

Their political call for a boycott comes as Beijing continues 

to subdue Hong Kong

, and China this year celebrated the

70th anniversary of its domination of Tibet

.

This Monday, it is in the ancient stadium of Olympia, in the Peloponnese region, that the flame of the next Olympic Games must be lit, before being transmitted, 24 hours later, in Athens, to the Chinese organizers.

After hosting the 2008 Olympics, Beijing is preparing to become in 2022 the first city in the world to have organized both the summer and

winter Olympics

.

🚨BREAKING! 🚨

Tibet & Hong Kong student activists have just been arrested at the Acropolis in Athens in protest of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, just 48 hours before the Olympic Torch will be handed to Beijing in the very same place.

Follow this space for more updates.

pic.twitter.com/xgUXF0lsPm

- Students for a Free Tibet (@SFTHQ) October 17, 2021

►

 To read also: In Tibet, "the restrictions are more and more numerous and in all areas"

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