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Critics of China’s human rights record have a new sanction in mind for Beijing: to strip the city of the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Lawmakers in several major Olympic countries, including the Netherlands, Canada and the United States, recently said that the 2022 Games should be withdrawn from China because of the crackdown on the Muslim Uighur minority in northwest Xinjiang. The Dutch and Canadian parliaments officially labeled this repression “genocide”, as did the United States Department of State.
In an interview, Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, a Dutch parliamentarian from the ruling coalition 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minority since World War II” and highlighted stories of forced sterilization and rape as evidence that China should be withdrawn of the Olympics.
Sjoerdsma, whose liberal social party initiated the Dutch motion to declare genocide the treatment of the Uighur minority, said that the athletes should decide for themselves whether to go to Beijing, but prefers that the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which organizes the games, attributed the event to another country.
“Large sports organizations, whether the Olympics or football, must consider the human rights situation in a possible host country much more deeply and, if it is already allocated … see how the situation evolves,” he said.
In early February, a group of seven US Republican senators, including Rick Scott of Florida, asked for the Beijing Games to be moved. In mid-February, the Canadian opposition’s conservative leader, Erin O’Toole, made a similar demand.
This is not the first time that the site of an imminent Olympics has sparked debate. Before the 1936 Games in Nazi Germany, teams from several countries, including the United States, considered staying away. In 1980, the US team boycotted the Moscow Olympics after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
What effect the bubbling resistance has for Beijing as host of 2022 has yet to be seen. Protests also broke out before the Beijing Olympics in 2008 over China’s policies in Tibet, observers note, but the event went as planned.
Ties Dams, a Chinese researcher at the Clingendael Institute, a Dutch think tank, said the idea of pressuring the Chinese government to change its treatment of the Uighur minority by threatening to boycott the Olympics was unlikely and “naive”.
However, he said the Dutch parliament’s motion to label the treatment of the Uighur people as genocide it can at least force the new government, which will be elected on March 17, to choose sides and support the aggressive stance on China adopted by the government of US President Joe Biden or the more cooperative approach taken by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Taking the European lead?
The Netherlands, a traditional powerhouse of the Winter Olympics thanks to its dominance in speed skating events, has recently emerged as an advocate for the use of sporting events to hold host nations accountable for their human rights policies.
Dutch lawmakers passed a motion last month asking the Dutch king and prime minister not to attend the Qatar football World Cup if the Netherlands qualified for next year’s tournament, citing “terrible conditions” for migrant workers who build the stadiums.
A similar motion for the Olympics was rejected, but lawmaker Sjoerdsma said he was hopeful that it could still pass in the coming weeks, with some parties likely to change positions.
However, the Dutch Olympic Committee has warned about how much the country can be ready to go. In response to questions about a potential Dutch boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics, a spokesman for the committee said: “In the Netherlands, we have a policy that a sports boycott is only spoken if the Netherlands, as a country, participates in a biggest international boycott event involving several sectors. That is not the case. “
Canadian Olympic chiefs, before the national parliament’s declaration of genocide, also said they would not support a boycott.
In an opinion piece from early February – which remains their position – the heads of the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic committees wrote that sports boycotts represented “little more than a convenient and politically inexpensive alternative to real and meaningful diplomacy”.
Chinese pushback
China, which was irritated by the pro-Tibet protests before the 2008 Games, made it clear that it is taking any threat of a boycott in 2022 very seriously.
“It is very irresponsible for someone to try to interfere, obstruct or disturb the organization and operation of [Winter] Olympics, for political reasons, ”said Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin last month, responding to calls for an international boycott.
“We believe that such movements would not be supported by the international community and are doomed to fail,” added Wang.
Shortly afterwards, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi told EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell that the two sides should “take advantage of next year’s Beijing Winter Olympics opportunity to improve sports exchanges. winter “and” promoting new highlights “in bilateral cooperation.
In the same connection, Wang also said that China “opposes the fabrication and dissemination of lies and false news” in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
For its part, the IOC tried to remain on the political fringe, telling POLITICO that it remains “neutral” on all global political issues.
“Attributing the Olympic Games to a National Olympic Committee (NOC) does not mean that the IOC agrees with your country’s political structure, social circumstances or human rights standards,” he said.
It is a position that has drawn its own criticism. Jules Boykoff, a professor at Pacific University who wrote extensively about the Olympics, accused the IOC of “hypocrisy”.
“The IOC has shown an unfortunate propensity to move away from human rights atrocities to ensure that the games continue,” said Boykoff.
“The Olympic Charter is full of powerful ideas on equality and anti-discrimination, but the IOC ignores its own Charter when it is convenient for them to do so,” he said.
But what effect do geopolitical maneuvers have on the real stars of any Olympics?
Olympic competitors are in a difficult position, said Rob Koehler of Global Athlete, a sports movement led by athletes.
“While governments are calling for a boycott of the Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2022, athletes are once again being used as pawns,” said Koehler. “The IOC and the IPC are primarily to blame for putting athletes in this position.”
“It was the IOC and the IPC that decided to grant the games to a country with a poor human rights record,” he said.
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