TOKYO: Despite the city facing the impact of incoming typhoon Chanthu, nearly 40 Uyghurs, Tibetan, Mongolian, Hong Kong and Chinese dissident activists, supported by a few Japanese activists, marched through central Tokyo on Saturday.

Carrying banners seeking the boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the activists urged the global community to note the human rights abuses by China in ethnic minority areas, as well as in Hong Kong.

They claimed that the rest of the world needed to wake up to China’s violation of basic human rights and to refrain from rewarding China despite being aware of its activities.

Comparing the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics with the peaceful and positive summer Olympics in Tokyo held recently, some of the activists pointed out that the world, by treating Japan and China at the same level is being unfair to countries that upheld the values of transparency, democracy, human rights and openness.

They urged all governments to come together and put pressure on China through the boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Uyghurs make up around 45 per cent of the population in China’s Xinjiang and have long been facing cultural, religious and economic discrimination.

Up to one million people, or about 7 per cent of the Muslim population in Xinjiang, have been incarcerated in an expanding network of “political re-education” camps, according to US officials and UN experts. (ANI)