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By Julian Linden
KUALA LUMPUR, July 31 (Reuters) - Beijing was chosen by the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) to host the 2022 Winter
Olympics on Friday, becoming the first city to be awarded both
the summer and winter Games.
The Chinese capital beat Kazakhstan's Almaty in a secret
ballot of 85 IOC members held at a convention centre in downtown
Kuala Lumpur in a decision that drew immediate criticism from
human rights activists.
The ballot was conducted twice, first electronically and
then by paper after it was discovered the electronic system had
malfunctioned.
The IOC said Beijing won a surprisingly close vote, 44-40,
with one abstention.
"Just as with the Beijing 2008 Summer Games, the Olympic
Family has put its faith in Beijing again to deliver the
athlete-centred, sustainable and economical Games we have
promised," the Beijing Bid Committee said in a statement.
"This will be a memorable event at the foot of the Great
Wall for the whole Olympic Family, the athletes and the
spectators that will further enhance the tremendous potential to
grow winter sports in our country, in Asia and around the
world."
Despite concerns about a lack of natural snow in the city's
distant mountains, and protests from human rights groups,
Beijing had been the clear favourite to win the vote after it
successfully hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics.
The high-powered Chinese delegation assured IOC members that
Beijing was the safe choice because it had already proved it
could stage the Games and said it would take winter sports into
the backyard of the world's most populated country.
EMOTIONAL APPEAL
The bid team from Almaty tugged at the IOC's heartstrings,
urging the committee, which includes sports administrators,
captains of industry and even royalty, to resist the temptation
to go back to China.
Instead, it called on the IOC to send a positive message to
smaller developing countries that they too could host the
world's greatest sporting events.
Kazakhstan Prime Minister Karim Massimov delivered a
powerful, moving speech, but the IOC, grappling with the effects
of a global economic crisis and facing dwindling interest from
countries wanting to host the Olympics, opted for Beijing.
"I think both bids were viable but Beijing has won," former
IOC President Jaques Rogge told Reuters.
"It's symbolic and it is a measure of confidence... it's a
good day for the Olympics."
However, New York-based Human Rights Watch group, which was
highly critical of both countries during the bid process, was
unimpressed by the decision.
"The Olympic motto of 'higher, faster, and stronger' is a
perfect description of the Chinese government's assault on civil
society: more peaceful activists detained in record time,
subject to far harsher treatment," HRW's China director Sophie
Richardson said in a statement.
"In choosing China to host another Games, the IOC has
tripped on a major human rights hurdle."
The IOC has been criticised by human rights groups for
years, most notably after awarding the 2008 Summer Games to
Beijing and the 2014 Winter Games to Russia's Sochi.
It has since added anti-discrimination clauses to the host
city contract.
IOC President Thomas Bach, who formally announced Beijing as
the winner when he pulled the city's name from an envelope, said
the IOC was limited to what it could do outside of the sporting
context.
"Outside the context of the Olympic Games the IOC has to
respect the laws of sovereign states," Bach said in his opening
address to the Congress.
"The IOC is not a world government. Governments have their
own responsibilities."
'KEEPING IT REAL'
The decision to go with China again reaffirmed the shifting
power-base of world sport, with East Asia now poised to host
three successive Olympics.
South Korea's Pyeongchang will host the 2018 Winter Games
and Tokyo the 2020 Summer Olympics.
But the choice, while expected, was more a reflection of the
economic problems in the rest of the world rather than an
overwhelming desire to stick with the same region.
The four European candidates who originally entered the
2022 race all dropped out, citing concerns about the escalating
costs of staging the Olympics, prompting the IOC to introduce a
raft of reforms to cut costs and attract more bidders in the
future.
Kazakhstan, a former Soviet state, pitched itself as a model
for future hosts, embracing all the new reforms with a low-cost
bid in a city which already has most of the facilities in place
after hosting the 2011 Asian Winter Games.
Bidding to become the first majority Muslim country to stage
the Olympics, the oil-rich Central Asian country also provided
assurances that they had the money to pay for the Games.
"We're feeling OK. We did our best," said Andrey Kryukov,
the vice chairman of Almaty's bid team.
"Our bid is perfect.
"The decision has been done by the IOC. ... This is a
competition, somebody wins, somebody loses."
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BREAKINGVIEWS-Olympics committee gets it right with Beijing
2022
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(Editing by Peter Rutherford)