Beijing is using its upcoming Winter Olympics to “sports wash” and gloss over its “horrible” human rights record, Human Rights Watch (HRW) executive director Kenneth Roth said, urging countries to join a diplomatic boycott.
The US, Britain, Australia and Canada have announced diplomatic boycotts of the Games, set to begin on Feb. 4, over what they consider to be widespread rights abuses by China, including against the Muslim Uighur minority in the Xinjiang region.
Roth said that other countries should also refrain from sending senior officials to the Olympics to help “spotlight the mass atrocities” in the region, as well as China’s “crushing of basic freedoms in Hong Kong.”
Photo: AFP
“The Chinese government is clearly trying to use the Beijing Olympics to whitewash or to sports wash its horrible repression,” he said in an interview ahead of the publication of the organization’s annual report yesterday.
He said the organization was not calling for athletes to boycott the Games, but insisted nations could do more.
“At a minimum, the international community should join the diplomatic boycott of the Olympics,” he said.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said that HRW “has always been full of prejudice.”
“Its vile words and actions to damage the Olympic cause will never prevail,” ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin (汪文斌) said.
Roth said that Olympic sponsors should also take a stand.
“Rather than in a sense announcing this whitewashing, [they] should be spotlighting what’s going on in Xinjiang,” he said.
Campaigners say at least 1 million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities have been incarcerated in “re-education camps” in the far western region.
After originally denying their existence, Beijing later defended them as vocational training centers aimed at reducing the appeal of Islamic extremism.
Beyond diplomacy, Roth said that companies have a moral obligation to resist the abuses taking place in Xinjiang.
“Every company should be doing what it can to avoid endorsing or legitimizing the Chinese government’s repression,” he said, slamming automaker Tesla’s decision to open a dealership in the province as “utterly tone deaf.”
“Every company should ensure that their supply chains are not complicit in the forced labor that has become so prevalent in Xinjiang,” he said.
Roth hailed Washington’s decision to ban the import of goods from the region unless it can be demonstrated that no forced labor was used in the production, and urged other countries to do the same.
He voiced hope that the office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet would soon publish a long-delayed report on rights abuses in Xinjiang, potentially inspiring a broader coalition of countries to speak out.
At the same time, Roth lamented that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who is scheduled to attend the Winter Olympics opening ceremony, “has been absolutely silent and refuses to speak critically about the Chinese government.”
“This is an enormous world failure,” Roth said.
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