Britain, Canada, and Australia joined the United States on Wednesday (December 8) in a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics in February. Western allies believe that China has generally violated human rights.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told parliament that Britain would not send ministers to participate in the Winter Olympics in the Chinese capital because a series of differences in issues have strained relations between Beijing and London to the worst level since the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989.
These include the persecution of democratic groups in Hong Kong, the former British colony, and human rights violations against Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.
Like other boycotting countries, Johnson confirmed that athletes will still participate. He said: “I think sports boycotts are unwise.”
In Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canadian officials would also not participate in the Olympics, saying that his government was “extremely concerned about the Chinese government’s repeated violations of human rights.”
Earlier Wednesday, Australia announced that its officials would not attend.
The decisions of these countries were made after the United States announced a diplomatic boycott on Monday, which Washington called China’s “genocide” and other human rights violations against Uyghur minorities in Xinjiang.
Beijing warned that the United States would “pay the price” and accused Canberra of “political stance and selfish games” and “blindly following” Washington.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said that China has never planned to invite Australian officials to participate in the Olympics, adding: “No matter whether they come or not, no one cares.”
‘Critical step’
Human rights organizations support these initiatives, and Sophie Richardson, director of Human Rights Watch’s China Department, called this a “critical step in challenging the Chinese government’s crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic communities.”
Activists say that at least 1 million Uighurs and other Turkic-speaking Muslim minorities have been detained in “re-education camps” in Xinjiang, where China has also been accused of forcibly sterilizing women and forced labor.
Beijing defended these camps, calling them vocational training centers, aimed at reducing the appeal of Islamic extremism.
Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, insisted on Wednesday that he remained politically neutral on the matter, while insisting that the focus is on “athletes participating in the Olympics.”
Cooling relationship
In recent years, all four Western countries have seen a sharp drop in relations with Beijing.
Britain criticized China’s spread of authoritarianism in Hong Kong. After raising espionage concerns in Washington last year, it prevented the Chinese giant Huawei from participating in its 5G broadband deployment, which angered Beijing.
At the same time, the relationship between Canada and China fell into a trough in Vancouver in December 2018 when the US arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou and Beijing detained two Canadian nationals in response.
All three were released and repatriated in September.
In recent years, Canberra’s relationship with China has also plummeted, and Beijing has imposed a series of punitive sanctions on Australian goods.
Australia is willing to legislate against overseas influence activities, prohibit Huawei from participating in 5G contracts, and call for an independent investigation into the origin of the coronavirus pandemic, which has angered China.
Australia’s recent move to equip its navy with nuclear-powered submarines under new defense agreements with the United Kingdom and the United States — widely considered to counter China’s influence in the Pacific region — has further angered Beijing.
Other countries are weighing their own initiatives.
France will take over as the rotating presidency of the European Council on January 1.
However, the Kremlin criticized the actions of the United States, saying that the 2022 Olympics should be “political.”
Russian President Putin has accepted the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
