2022 Beijing Winter Games

"The athletes are being victimized by a very bad decision of the International Olympic Commission. The IOC ignored all the protests and all the advice they were given. They didn't listen."

"They gave Beijing the Games and they are putting our athletes in this tough spot. Our athletes should not want medals that have been soaked in blood."

Ivy Li, Canadian Friends of Hong Kong

"Some may argue that sports and politics should not mix."

"We would respond that when genocide is happening, it is no longer a matter of politics, but of human rights and crimes against humanity."

Bipartisan Parliamentary letter to the Government of Canada

 

"Our perspective on all of this is that no matter how complex and how conflicting views may exist among countries, we're trying to steer a middle course here using sport as a means of communication even in the worst of times."

"Where would you celebrate the Olympic Games if you take that kind of attitude?"

"You can withdraw ambassadors during the Games…you could suspend consular functions, there are all kinds of ways that states can signal disapproval. But cancelling a sport competition really doesn't make sense, either philosophically from the sport perspective or as a determinate of state conduct." 

"When people sit down and think what it means…they will look and say 'it's not going to be effective', we know that from the [1980 and 1984] boycotts." 

"It does not change the conduct, so why would we sacrifice our athletes and their dreams in a gesture that we know will have no impact whatsoever?" 

IOC Vice-President Dick Pound

The winter games are due to start in one year, on 4 February 2022  Reuters

 

Parliamentarians in Europe and the United Kingdom have called on their governments to make strong overtures to the International Olympic Commission to seriously consider moving the Winter Games from Beijing to another country with a less controversial human rights record. The new Biden administration in the United States has not yet featured the issue beyond a statement to develop a "shared approach" with allies and partners, even while a bipartisan effort in the U.S.Congress is building, to avoid attendance at the Beijing Games.

The Canadian Olympic Committee's chief executive officer David Shoemaker speaks of any effort that goes toward persuading the government of Canada to move on giving the Games a pass would victimize the hard-working, talented Canadian contestants. "We are not the ones who are victimizing the Canadian athletes", responded Ivy Li of Canadian Friends of Hong Kong, working alongside Students for a Free Tibet Canada and the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project.

As the most senior of the International Olympic Committee's 98 members, former president of the Canadian Olympic Committee Dick Pound speaks of the 1980 boycott of the Moscow Olympics as having been "Completely ineffective" in persuading the Kremlin to pull Soviet troops out of Afghanistan. "Boycotts don't work", flatly stated COC CEO David Shoemaker. Canadian Paralympics Committee CEO Karen O'Neill's position is that the Olympics "help build connections and open doors", providing a "unique means for the promotion of peace and development, for uniting rather than dividing."

Which is precisely the rationale given over the years for engaging with China diplomatically,  commercially, in trade and investment opportunities, despite the fact that in so doing the Chinese Communist Party was not persuaded to 'open doors', either to democracy in Hong Kong, or fair play under international law on production and research, preferring instead the short cut of commercial espionage, and of aggressively demanding that corporate formulae be freely available to China if foreign companies wanted to set up shop in its gargantuan marketplace.

 

The Beijing games are set to take place just months after the delayed Tokyo summer games  Reuters

 

When the European Union and Canada undertook to refuse importation of manufactured goods produced in Xianjing tainted by slave labour conditions imposed upon the Turkic Muslim Uyghur population, China was offended. This is the same China that continues its aggression against Tibetans, members of Falun Gong, Christians and Muslim populations in China. Credible accusations of involuntary organ removals from political prisoners for China's transplant industry represents yet another horrendous human rights violation.

With all this background, and the blatant military aggression that Beijing imposes on its neighbours over disputed territorial claims, it is beyond difficult to comprehend how it might be that the International Olympic Commission saw fit to gift this world-class malefactor with the Olympic Games yet again. Having done so is tantamount to complacency over Beijing's terrorism, for this is what it is; a huge nation of great power and influence terrorizing its own population and its neighbours.

The world chose not to boycott the 1936 Games in Munich despite knowing quite well how the Third Reich was shaping up as a human rights monster. Boycotting those games would not have stopped its march toward genocide and the Second World War, but it would have indicated that the world understood it to be the honourable thing to do; attendance at those games gave Nazi Germany the validation it looked for and the assurance that proceeding as it meant to would have few repercussions.

What the Games proffer to the host countries is prestige and profit, neither of which China has earned. It represents a huge benefit in propaganda, to present itself as a civil, admirable administration benefiting the world even as it erodes human rights on a grand scale in its hunger for the ultimate goal, to replace the current sole superpower in earning power and universal status. For Canada to attend the Games while Chinese hostage diplomacy practised globally, holds two Canadians in incarceration on trumped-up charges is indefensible.

Indeed, permitting Canadian athletes to attend the 2022 Games in Beijing would be placing each of them at risk of becoming victims of Beijing's penchant for taking hostages when it is displeased by the actions of another country. 

"Athletes have no say on the rules of Olympic engagement, but will be the ones blamed for attending."

"National Olympic Committees must demand that the IOC align the Olympic Charter with the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and demand that athletes are never placed in this position again." 

"Athletes need to be given a say and a voice, that is why we are demanding that rule 50 ['rule 50' forbids athletes from protesting at Olympic venues] be rescinded." 

Rob Koehler, general secretary, advocacy group Global Athlete

Call from over 180 human rights organizations to boycott the Beijing Games in 2022, due to human rights violations in China