Canada, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Lithuania, Australia, United States… The diplomatic boycott widens – Liberation

After London, Wellington Vilnius, Canberra and Washington, it’s Ottawa’s turn to announce that no government minister plans to travel to the Chinese capital for the sporting event. What about France?

Canada enters the game. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Wednesday evening a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, following in the footsteps of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. “We are deeply disturbed by the Chinese government’s human rights abuses,” he said at a press conference.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced earlier today that“no minister” of his government was not planning to go there either. “There will indeed be a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics,” said Boris Johnson during the weekly question and answer session in Parliament, stressing that the sports boycott is not “not politics” of his government.

The United States and Australia have already announced a similar measure. Canberra also followed the movement this Wednesday morning by indicating that it will not send any representative of its government to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, joining the United States, which had positioned itself on the question Monday. Australia’s decision comes in a context of “disagreement” with China on a number of issues ranging from Australia’s foreign interference laws to the recent decision to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

He also mentioned human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region and Beijing’s reluctance to meet with Australian officials for discussions: “Australia will not back down from the tough stance it has taken to defend its interests, and it is obviously no surprise that we are not sending Australian officials to these Games”.

This decision, which does not prevent the athletes from participating in the Games, comes the day after the announcement by the United States of their “diplomatic boycott” in the name of the defense of human rights, more particularly the situation in Xinjiang that Washington considers it a genocide of the Uyghur minority. Beijing immediately retorted that “the United States will pay the price for their bad deed”. Around 40 Australian athletes are expected to take part in the Beijing Games, which open on February 4.

Sophie Richardson, director of Human Rights Watch in China, called the Australian decision a milestone crucial towards challenging the crimes against humanity committed by the Chinese government against the Uyghurs and other Turkish communities”. Activists say at least a million Uighurs and other Turkic-speaking minorities, mostly Muslims, are incarcerated in camps in Xinjiang. China is accused of forcibly sterilizing women there and imposing forced labor. Beijing claims that the camps are in fact vocational training centers intended to keep their residents away from radicalization.

Relations between Australia and China have deteriorated sharply in recent years. China has imposed a series of sanctions on Australian products in the context of a political dispute that has plunged bilateral relations into their most serious crisis since Tiananmen (1989).

Update : addition this Wednesday at 2 p.m. of the diplomatic boycott of the United Kingdom, then of Canada.