BEIJING, CHINA (Washington Insider Magazine) – With the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games on Friday, the campaign to boycott the tournament has grown in recent weeks, as seen by protests in Taiwan, Austria, Indonesia, Germany, and Belgium.
Protesters denounced Chinese President Xi Jinping and his administration’s propaganda, labor conditions, oppression of ethnic and religious minorities, and actions to suppress freedom of expression and the press, among a slew of other issues. Activists and human rights organizations, on the other hand, argue that diplomatic boycotts can only go so far and that much more needs to be done to improve China’s situation.
Human Rights Watch’s China director, Sophie Richardson, told ABC News that the Chinese government’s previous human rights commitments have usually fallen short, despite what it says publicly.
The Chinese government frequently ignores or disputes similar assertions, as it did last year when the United States blacklisted 14 Chinese companies, stating that the government will take appropriate actions to firmly preserve Chinese enterprises’ lawful rights and interests.
Though Human Rights Watch, one of the 243 international organizations that have called for action against China, supports a diplomatic boycott, Richardson believes that in the grand scale of things, it is far more important that governments pursue an UN-backed investigation into potential crimes against humanity prosecutions for Chinese government leaders who are credibly accused of being accomplices in these crimes.
Mabel Tung, Head of the NGO Vancouver Society in Support of Democratic Movement (VSSDM), told ABC News that diplomatic boycotts are “simply not enough.”
Tung’s group claims that boycotting the Olympics is a more effective tool than a diplomatic boycott to hurt China’s economy.
The French government is one of the few countries that will not boycott the Olympics and will be sending 2 representatives to the games. The French National Assembly, on the other hand, just agreed to recognize the genocide of the Uyghurs.
Raphael Glucksmann, a center-left Eurodeputy and one of the major voices on the issue of the Uyghur in France, told ABC News that these judgments are a “total shame.”
According to Human Rights Watch, up to 1,000,000 Uyghurs and others have been unlawfully arrested in Xinjiang in recent years.
The Winter Olympics will be held in Beijing from February 4 to February 20.
Image via Reuters
