Post date: Jan 22, 2014 2:48:0 PM
Activists say the Sochi Olympics pose serious threat to environment, urge the IOC to pay more attention to human rights and environmental issues in the Olympics host countries.
MOSCOW, RUSSIA (JANUARY 22, 2014) (REUTERS) - Representatives of Human Rights Watch, Greenpeace, and Russian environmental groups called on the IOC to paid more attention on Wednesday (January 22) to environmental and human rights issues in the Games host countries and said the Olympic construction poses an enormous threat to the nature of the Caucasus.
"The Olympic project opened an opportunity and a desire to destroy precious natural areas, first of all in the Caucasus, under the pretext of certain big infrastructure projects as it is called, but in reality these are commercial projects," said Mikhail Kreindlin, representative of Greenpeace Russia.Environmentalists say that under the pretext of Olympic construction, Russian authorities amended the legislation which now allows construction inside protected natural areas.
"The Olympics itself and what will follow presents an enormous threat to the nature of the Caucasus and not only in places where Olympic venues are being built," Kreindlin added.
Putin is expected to spend more than $50 billion to show off Russia's modern face at the Games inSochi, a Black Sea resort on the edge of the Caucasus Mountains.
Moscow promised to set "new environmental standards" in Olympic construction. Complaints about construction, along with international concerns about gay rights and security, threaten Putin's efforts to improve Russia's image through the games.
The Sochi 2014 organizing committee says construction has minimized harmful carbon emissions, and companies carrying out construction say they are sticking to their promises to meet international standards in protecting the environment.
But some ecologists say the damage is only the beginning and that construction may have put the region under threat of potential ecological disasters, including poisoned drinking water and flooding.
Another area of concern are human rights and intensified pressure on activists in the region. New York-based Human Rights Watch says local environmental activists have been harassed over their work.
"What we see now in Sochi is persecution of activists, when they are stopped by police, when they are summoned for talks, all this happens in the context of security measures ahead of the Olympics," saidRachel Denber, Human Rights Watch Deputy Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division.
Several environmental activists have had criminal cases opened against them. One of them is Suren Gazaryan, who received asylum in Estonia after facing criminal accusations which he called politically motivated. Another is Gazaryan colleague from the North Caucasus Ecological Watch group Yevgeny Vitishko, who is facing three-year sentence.
In 2008, months after Putin won the right to hold the Games in Sochi, an U.N. environmental group paid a visit to the area. After meeting government ministers, Olympic contractor Olympstroy and local non-governmental groups, the delegation concluded the Olympic project was aimed at economic development "in which environmental aspects play only a minor role".
Environmental experts say that Olympic construction which has consisted of pouring soil into lowland swamps helped cause the flooding that created a state of emergency in the area in September and could increase the risk for more flooding.
Activists called on the IOC to pay attention to human rights and environmental issues in the host countries, warning that otherwise the Olympics image would be tarnished.
"We think that if the International Olympic Committee does not pay attention to these issues, its image as an organisation and therefore the image of the Olympic movement as a whole and the image of the Olympic Games as an international event will be destroyed. And I really hope that the IOC leaders understand this and will have to react to it in some way," Mikhail Kreindlin said.
"It seems to me the IOC has to think about the Olympic Games image, because after Beijing Olympics, after Russian Olympics, many European countries would make conclusions about whether it is worth to cooperate with the IOC and to host the Olympics, because the Games become less and less of a sports celebration, it is more a celebration for officials and a show of certain ambitions by the authorities," Russian environmentalist Yevgenia Chirikova.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has staked his personal and political prestige on February's Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi.
If all goes according to plan, the costliest Games in history will be a showcase for Russia's achievements under Putin, the vindication of a six-year vanity project on a truly Soviet scale.