With mounting human rights concerns, should Canada boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics?

CALGARY — As the world says goodbye to the Tokyo Olympics, all eyes are now on Beijing 2022 as the games are just six months away. But topping COVID-19 concerns are discussions about boycotting the games over human rights concerns.

Since 2017, China has been under international fire for the genocide of the Uyghur Muslim minority.

Protests across the globe call for countries to boycott the games, and just last February, some lawmakers urged Canada to ask the Olympic Committee to move the games if the Chinese government refused to stop their actions.

“The IOC chose Beijing 7 years ago, and I think that was a time when the opposition against hosting the games in Beijing should have been voiced,” said GamesBids Producer Robert Livingstone.

Simultaneously, the CEO and Secretary-General of the Canadian Olympic Committee, David Shoemaker, says that boycotting is not the answer.

“Allowing Beijing to hold the Winter 2022 games is an explicit approval of their actions and the atrocities that they’re committing,” said Babur Ilchi, a program director at the Campaign for Uyghurs.

---

READ MORE:

• Ruling expected in case of one of two Canadian Michaels detained in China

• Chinese court upholds Canadian prisoner Robert Schellenberg’s death sentence

• O’Toole warns Canadians not safe in China after court upholds death sentence

---

Ilchi is an Uyghur Muslim living in Calgary, he was born in Hotan, East Turkestan, and moved to Canada at the age of three. He believes holding the games in Beijing will allow them to sanitize their image, and he uses the Berlin 1936 summer games as an example.

“Nazi Germany was able to use the 1936 games to create a huge amount of propaganda films, a huge amount of goodwill in the international community, all while moving along their stages for the Holocaust,” said Ilchi.

Several polls show a large number of Canadians would support boycotting the Beijing Olympics.

Hockey Canada announced its coaching staff for the games just days after one poll was released.

“Nobody wants to harm athletes chances of, you know, taking those years of training and showing it to the world,” said Ilchi. “But we have to recognize in the grand scheme of things, in the bigger picture, that genocide, crimes against humanity, these are horrific, horrific things that affect millions of people.”

Earlier this year, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole and Green Party Leader Annamie Paul called for a relocation of the games, a way to boycott Beijing without punishing the athletes.

“No, it cannot be relocated, there is no way any city in the IOC could re-organize these games elsewhere to occur in February, it’s not going to happen,” said Livingstone.

He says that ship has sailed, and points to Tokyo as an example of how difficult it was to simply postpone it due to the ongoing pandemic.