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Critics of China’s human rights record have a new sanction in mind for Beijing: stripping the city of the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Lawmakers in a number of major Olympic nations, including the Netherlands, Canada and the US, recently said the 2022 Games should be removed from China due to the oppression of the Uyghur Muslim minority in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. The Dutch and Canadian parliaments have officially labeled this repression as ‘genocide’, just like the American Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In an interview, Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, a Dutch MP from the ruling coalition of the D66 Party, pointed to “the largest detention of an ethnic minority since World War II” and highlighted stories of forced sterilization and rape as evidence that China has lost the Olympics. Games should be stripped. .
Sjoerdsma, whose social-liberal party initiated the Dutch motion to call the treatment of the Uyghur minority a genocide, said athletes should decide for themselves whether to go to Beijing, but he would prefer the International Olympic Committee (IOC), that organizes the games has assigned the event to another country.
“The major sports organizations, be it the Olympics or football, should look much more closely at the human rights situation in a potential host country, and if it has already been assigned … see how the situation develops,” he said.
In early February, a group of seven Republican US senators, including Rick Scott of Florida, all called for the Beijing Games to be rescheduled. In mid-February, Canadian Conservative opposition leader Erin O’Toole made a similar demand.
This isn’t the first time the location of an impending Olympics has sparked debate. Prior to the 1936 Games in Nazi Germany, teams from a number of countries, including the US, considered staying away. In 1980, the US team boycotted the Moscow Olympics after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
The effect of the rising resistance on Beijing as host in 2022 remains to be seen. Ahead of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, protests also erupted over Chinese policy in Tibet, observers note, but the event went ahead as planned.
Ties Dams, a China researcher at the Clingendael Institute, a Dutch think tank, said it was unlikely and ‘naive’ to pressure the Chinese government to change the treatment of the Uyghur minority by threatening to boycott the Uyghur minority. Olympics.
He did say that the motion in the Dutch parliament to label the treatment of the Uyghur people as genocide could at the very least force the new government, to be elected on March 17, to take sides and support either the aggressive stance of US President Joe Biden’s administration towards China or the more cooperative approach of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Take a European lead?
A traditional winter Olympics powerhouse thanks to its dominance in skating events, the Netherlands has recently emerged as a proponent of using sporting events to hold host countries accountable for their human rights policies.
Dutch lawmakers passed a motion last month calling on the Dutch king and prime minister not to attend the FIFA World Cup in Qatar if the Netherlands qualify for next year’s tournament, citing the “appalling conditions” for migrant workers entering the stadiums. to build.
A similar motion for the Olympics was rejected, but lawmaker Sjoerdsma said he hoped it could be passed in the coming weeks, with some parties likely to change their position.
However, the Olympic Committee of the Netherlands issued a warning about how far the country could go. In response to questions about a possible Dutch boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics, a spokesperson for the committee said: “In the Netherlands, we have a policy that a sports boycott will only be discussed if the Netherlands as a country participates in a larger international boycott involving different sectors. involved. That is not the case.”
Canadian Olympic bosses also said they will not support a boycott ahead of the national parliament’s declaration of genocide.
In an opinion piece in early February – which remains their position – the chiefs of the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic committees wrote that sporting boycotts “were little more than a convenient and politically cheap alternative to genuine and meaningful diplomacy.”
Chinese relapse
China, which was angry at the pro-Tibet protests ahead of the 2008 Games, has made it clear that it takes any threat of a 2022 boycott very seriously.
“It is very irresponsible that someone tries to organize and operate the [Winter] Olympics, for political reasons, ”Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said last month, in response to calls for an international boycott.
“We believe such moves would not be supported by the international community and are doomed to failure,” added Wang.
Shortly thereafter, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell that the two sides should “seize the opportunity of next year’s Beijing Winter Olympics to strengthen exchanges on winter sports” and “promote new peaks” in bilateral cooperation.
In the same appeal, Wang also said that China “opposes fabrication and spreading lies and fake news” about Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
For its part, the IOC has tried to stay on the political sidelines, telling POLITICO that it remains “neutral” on all global political issues.
“Awarding the Olympic Games to a National Olympic Committee (NOC) does not mean that the IOC agrees with the political structure, social conditions or human rights standards in his country,” he said.
It is a position that has received its own criticism. Jules Boykoff, a professor at Pacific University who has written extensively about the Olympics, accused the IOC of “hypocrisy.”
“The IOC has shown an unfortunate tendency to turn away from human rights atrocities to ensure the games continue,” Boykoff said.
“The Olympic Charter is full of powerful ideas about equality and anti-discrimination, but the IOC ignores its own charter when it suits them,” he said.
But what effect does geopolitical maneuvering have on the real stars of any Olympic Games?
The Olympic competitors have been put in a difficult position, said Rob Koehler of Global Athlete, an athlete-led sports movement.
“With governments calling for a boycott of the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Games, athletes are once again being used as pawns,” said Koehler. “The IOC and IPC are primarily responsible for placing athletes in this position.”
“It is the IOC and IPC who decided to award the games to a country with a dire human rights record,” he said.
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