He raised a banner to the camera, which read “No Olympics in Tokyo.”
Follow Us
Tokyo Olympics: During the International Olympic Committee (IOC) press conference, an anti-Tokyo Olympics protester unfurled a banner and repeated anti-Olympic messages. The man, identified as David O’Brien from Yahoo, asked the last question of the meeting to the IOC Executive Board.
He raise a banner to the camera, which read “No Olympics in Tokyo”, and repeated chants saying “no Olympics anywhere” and “*expletive* the Olympics.
“No Olympics anywhere,” he said.
Campaign group NOlympicsLA claimed responsibility for the protest and warned of more such protests in the future. The protestor was shut down by Mark Adams, the IOC’s Presidential spokesperson. The video of the incident was later deleted.
“No Olympics anywhere, *expletive* the Olympics, we don’t want the Olympics anywhere. No Olympics in LA, No Olympics in Tokyo.”
Tokyo 2020 was the key interest of the meeting. Adams insists the Games will go ahead as scheduled this year despite emergency in Japan due to the COVID-19. There is not a lot of public support for the event, as well.
Adams said the IOC and organisers were “moving full ahead” with the Games. The games will start in less than three months’ time.
“We are fully concentrated now, in this last implementation phase, of delivering an excellent Games which will bring the world together,” Adams said.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Wednesday said they are in full support of Japan’s COVID-19 measures. It also added that it is confident the Tokyo Olympics would be a “historic” event. However, the public is against the event.
With less than three months to go before the Olympics starts on July 23, Japan faced a surge in COVID-19 cases.
A majority of its population wants the Olympics cancelled second time. According to several polls, with about 70% of the 10,500 athletes — about 7,800 — already qualified for the Games.
“We are now very much in an implementation phase with 78 days to go and fully concentrated on delivering the Games,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams told an online news conference.
