On Feb. 4, China’s government and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) are to open the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US have announced diplomatic boycotts of the Games to protest Beijing’s ongoing persecution of Uighurs and other egregious human rights abuses, including the oppression of Tibetans, and trampling on human dignity and democratic governance in Hong Kong.
Athletes can compete from these countries, but no elected person would attend.
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum, among others, reports that Beijing’s attacks on the Uighur community are alarming in severity and constitute “crimes against humanity,” including “forced sterilization, sexual violence, enslavement, torture, forced transfer, persecution and imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty.”
The Canadian parliament last year voted 266-0 that Beijing’s actions against Uighurs constituted genocide within the 1948 UN Genocide Convention and that if it continued, the Games should be moved from Beijing.
After five weeks of international concern about the safety of Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai (彭帥), the IOC admitted on Tuesday that it could not provide any certainties about her safety. Two video calls between Peng and the IOC are her only reported contacts with people outside China since Nov. 2, when she posted on social media allegations that she was sexually assaulted by a senior Chinese Communist Party official.
Canadians and the world went through similar debates in 1936 and in 2008; both offer lessons on what Canada and other nations should do now. Adolf Hitler manipulated the 1936 Berlin Olympics to improve the Nazi image internationally. In 2008, the concern was primarily the Chinese government’s oppression and organ pillaging of prisoners of conscience, including Falun Gong members.
Allowing Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to host the Winter Olympics creates a similar opportunity, something the international community should firmly resist. The Beijing government is hoping to bask in the positive publicity surrounding the Games. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, it has aggressively denied any systematic crimes against its own people, claiming that these are all internal affairs and that critics are violating its sovereignty.
Diplomats from other countries who attend the Beijing Olympics will be lending their tacit consent to the abuses being perpetrated. This is a conscience issue that touches on the essence of our humanity. Canada’s diplomatic boycott of the Games is sending a clear message: Canadians do not support the grave injustices which continue in China.
David Kilgour is a former Canadian lawmaker who served as Canadian secretary of state for the Asia-Pacific from 2002 to 2003. Phil Kretzmar is a cofounder of Stop Uyghur Genocide Canada.
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