{"id":974,"date":"2021-12-09T17:33:27","date_gmt":"2021-12-09T14:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/?p=974"},"modified":"2021-12-09T17:33:29","modified_gmt":"2021-12-09T14:33:29","slug":"trudeau-announces-diplomatic-boycott-of-beijing-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/trudeau-announces-diplomatic-boycott-of-beijing-olympics\/","title":{"rendered":"TRUDEAU ANNOUNCES DIPLOMATIC BOYCOTT OF BEIJING OLYMPICS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

CBC News<\/a>. 8 December 2021<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Below is an article published by CBC News<\/a>. Photo:AP.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced today that Canada will launch a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

No federal government officials will attend the games. Canadian athletes will still be allowed to compete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S., U.K. and Australia already have announced they won\u2019t send official delegations to the games \u2014 a collective attempt to send a message to China that its human rights abuses have not gone unnoticed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking to reporters on Parliament Hill, Trudeau said the government is \u201cextremely concerned\u201d by the \u201crepeated human rights violations carried out by the Chinese government.\u201d He said Canada will show its displeasure with the communist regime by withholding the delegates that normally would attend high-profile events like the opening and closing ceremonies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked if he was anticipating any blowback from Beijing for snubbing China as it prepares to host the world, Trudeau said \u201cthis should not come as a surprise\u201d to the regime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor months, we have been coordinating and discussing the issue with our allies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MPs, senators and civil society groups have been pushing the Trudeau government to hold China accountable for its crackdown on democratic rights in Hong Kong and the ongoing abuse of the Uyghur Muslim minority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this year, the House of Commons passed a motion branding the violence directed at religious minorities in China\u2019s Xinjiang province as \u201cgenocide.\u201d That motion followed a Commons subcommittee report that found China persecutes its Muslim minority through mass detention in concentration camps, forced labour, state surveillance and population control measures \u2014 policies the report said are designed to \u201ceradicate Uyghur culture and religion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the motion, MPs also called on the federal government to use its influence to pressure the International Olympic Committee to move the games out of China \u201cif the Chinese government continues this genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conservative Leader Erin O\u2019Toole said Wednesday his party\u2019s push to relocate the games got \u201cno traction with Mr. Trudeau\u201d and a diplomatic boycott is the next best thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While he said he\u2019s horrified by reports of violence in Xinjiang, O\u2019Toole said a full boycott would be unfair to Canada\u2019s Olympic and Paralympic athletes who have trained so hard for the world\u2019s premier sporting event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trudeau agreed that Olympic athletes shouldn\u2019t pay a price for China\u2019s abuses. \u201cThey need to have one thing in mind and that\u2019s representing the country to the best of their ability and winning a gold medal for Canada,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a media statement, the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) said it \u201cunderstands and respects\u201d the government\u2019s decision and applauds the effort to \u201cdraw an important distinction between the participation of athletes and the participation of government officials.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last time Canada pursued a full boycott of the Olympics was in 1980, when the federal government blocked athletes from participating in the summer games in Moscow to protest the Soviet Union\u2019s military presence in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Citing that 1980 move, the COC said \u201chistory has shown that athlete boycotts only hurt athletes without creating meaningful change.\u201d The COC said the games will \u201ccreate an important platform to draw attention\u201d to ongoing issues in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Foreign Affairs Minister M\u00e9lanie Joly said the decision to pull diplomats and keep Minister of Sport Pascale St-Onge and others at home was motivated by reports of abuse coming out of Xinjiang, an oil-rich territory in the country\u2019s northwest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cClearly it is important for us to send a strong signal to China because we\u2019re extremely concerned about allegations about the Uyghurs,\u201d Joly said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joly said she has raised the possibility of a boycott with allies in nearly every meeting she\u2019s had since being named foreign minister in October. She said she will travel to a G7 meeting in the U.K. this weekend to press other holdouts, such as France and Germany, to join the boycott.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCanada has been playing a leadership role on this \u2014 this is in line with our foreign policy. Canada always stands up on questions of human rights,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conservative MP Michael Chong, the party\u2019s foreign affairs critic, said Trudeau\u2019s China policy has been characterized by \u201cincoherence and contradiction.\u201d He said China\u2019s abuses demand a stronger response and a diplomatic boycott doesn\u2019t go far enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve called on the government to take many more measures to counter the threats that China is presenting to our values and our interests. It\u2019s why we\u2019ve been calling for years now to ban Huawei,\u201d Chong said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While other security partners have long blocked Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from building out their 5G networks, Canada has been silent on the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the absence of a definitive decision by the Liberal government, most of the country\u2019s wireless providers have opted already to work with Sweden-based Ericsson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huawei\u2019s founder has close ties to China\u2019s communist leadership and intelligence partners have long warned that the company\u2019s technology could be used to spy on Canadians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re unilaterally alone among our intelligence allies in not making a decision to restrict or ban Huawei,\u201d Chong said. \u201cIt\u2019s part of a broader pattern on the part of this government that has isolated Canada on the international stage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canada-Chinese relations soured after China detained two Canadians \u2014 Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig \u2014 in an apparent act of retribution for Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou\u2019s 2018 arrest on U.S. fraud charges. In September, the two men were freed by China\u2019s regime after the legal dispute involving Meng was partly resolved by U.S. prosecutors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The western world\u2019s relationship with China has deteriorated over the past two years. China has been accused of covering up early COVID-19 outbreaks and of pushing World Health Organization (WHO) officials to praise its pandemic response rather than scrutinize its actions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CBC News. 8 December 2021 Below is an article published by CBC News. Photo:AP. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced today that Canada will launch a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":975,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974\/revisions\/975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}