When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) allows totalitarian countries to host Olympic Games, it gives legitimacy and provides a global showcase for governments that violate human rights. It is not difficult to understand. This is the fundamental reason why countries like Russia and China constantly apply for the privilege of organizing international sporting events.
In Canada and around the world, groups are rising to demand a boycott of the Beijing Winter Games, the opening ceremony of which is scheduled for a year less a few days. These calls come because of the genocide that the Chinese government has been carrying out for several years against its Uyghur minority.
A genocide, by the way, is defined as an act of destruction organized and approved by a State and aimed at the systematic extermination of an ethnic, religious or social group
. We are talking about the most heinous crime that can be committed on Earth.
The Uyghurs, who are Muslims, live in the province of Xinjiang and there are 12 million of them, or one and a half times the population of Quebec.
Last Saturday, a group of MPs representing all the political parties in Ottawa and Quebec City, as well as humanitarian organizations and former Olympic champion Jean-Luc Brassard took a slightly different approach.
Instead of calling for a boycott (which would have the effect of punishing the athletes), these personalities are asking the IOC to move the 2022 Winter Games to a country other than China. In an open letter, they plead the fact that the Olympic movement and the athletes cannot turn a blind eye to the Chinese government’s efforts to eliminate the Uyghurs.
The signatories of this letter draw a parallel with the Games presented in Germany in 1936, which they describe as Shame games
.
The situation of the Uyghurs having been known for several years, one can wonder why all these people waited so long before proposing a move of the Beijing Games. With less than a year before the Games, it is almost utopian.
However, the questions they raise are extremely relevant. Canada’s conduct in this matter will say a lot about our core beliefs and values.
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Since Uyghurs began to be systematically persecuted in 2014, various organizations and news organizations have reported extremely disturbing and incriminating facts.
After having met and heard several witnesses, a subcommittee of the House of Commons also ruled, last October, that the actions of the Chinese Communist Party meet the definition of genocide that appears in the International Convention.
- Again on Saturday, a report published in La Presse + told us how the Chinese government goes about forcibly sterilizing women from the Uyghur minority.
- According to many sources, since 2014, a large number of Uyghurs disappear overnight without leaving a trace. More than two million Uyghurs are imprisoned in concentration camps where they are supposedly busy
re-educate
. - A little over a year ago, as part of an initiative undertaken by a press consortium, Radio-Canada published this report explaining the Orwellian surveillance system set up to spy on the slightest deeds and gestures of this religious minority. For example, to enter a supermarket, Uyghurs must pass under a reader that automatically picks up content from their cell phones.
- And still in the same vein, around a million Uyghur families have been forced to welcome in their homes a
sent
government and treat him as a member of their family unit. This member of the Han majority watches over the Uyghur family and ensures their adherence to Chinese values. People are constantly watched and terrorized. - In addition to exercising this repression on its territory, the Chinese government is tracking down Uyghurs who fled China and who have become citizens of other countries, including Canada.
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What is happening in China today is incredibly violent and inhuman. You can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.
The morality of the IOC being infinitely elastic, we know that it will remain silent on this delicate question. Last year, in the midst of a pandemic, it was necessary for the athletes and the national Olympic committees to pass over the body of Thomas Bach for the Tokyo Games to be postponed. And since 2016, Bach has done everything to prevent the Russians from being punished after orchestrating the biggest cheating operation in sports history.
But incredibly, within the Canadian Olympic Committee there are people ready to go up to the barricades to argue that it will be very appropriate to send our athletes to Beijing to celebrate the brotherhood of the peoples there. In the midst of genocide! Like nothing ever happened.
In an open letter released last Thursday, COC CEO David Shoemaker and COC Secretary General Karen O’Neil categorically rejected calls to boycott the Beijing Games.
According to Mr. Shoemaker and Ms. O’Neil: Boycotts do not work. They only punish the athletes who were to participate in the events, their opponents and those for whom they would have been a source of inspiration.
As proof, they add, even though many Western countries boycotted the Moscow Games in 1980, the Soviets continued their presence in Afghanistan for another decade. And in retaliation, in 1984, the countries of the Eastern bloc in turn boycotted the Los Angeles Games.
The Olympic and Paralympic Games have the unique power to bring the world together and create dialogue like few other events. When our athletes take to action in Beijing, Team Canada will showcase Canadian values and help build essential bridges, not walls between nations.
, concluded the letter from the COC leaders.
***
What David Shoemaker and Karen O’Neil seem to forget, however, is that the boycott of the Moscow Games still hurt the Soviet regime very badly.
Even for a totalitarian regime controlling all media, it is extremely difficult to explain to its people why 65 countries suddenly decided to turn their backs on it. In addition, instead of being able to use the 1980 Games to spread the splendor
from the USSR throughout the world, the Soviets found themselves isolated, forced to present quasi-regional Games which had virtually no visibility in the West.
Whether the occupation of Afghanistan has continued or not is irrelevant. In the end, 40 years later, we remember that 65 countries refused to support a military invasion in a sensitive part of the world that threatened world peace.
Moreover, if the vision of the world expressed by David Shoemaker and Karen O’Neil held up, it would be enough to allow all the dictatorial regimes on the planet to host the Games for their values to be suddenly overthrown by the purity of the world. Olympic ideal and Canadian values.
If this logic held up, we wouldn’t even be debating this issue. After hosting the Summer Games in 2008, the Chinese would not have attacked Hong Kong’s democracy and are not committing genocide against the Uyghurs. The Russians, for their part, would not have invaded Ukrainian territory a few days after the Sochi Games. And during those same Games, their government would not have developed an unprecedented doping system for propaganda reasons.
***
A few weeks ago, the President of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), René Fasel, was making exactly the same kind of speech as the leaders of the COC.
Belarus, where dictator Alexander Lukashenko is rife, had been appointed to act, together with Latvia, as the host country for the next World Championship. Most seriously, Fasel maintained that the event was going to serve to build bridges between the dictator and his opponents
.
However, last summer’s elections went very badly. Most of the candidates running for the presidency against Lukashenko have been arrested. It was then announced that the dictator was re-elected with over 80% of the vote, and the gigantic protests that followed were met with a violent wave of repression and arrests.
In addition to public pressure, it took the major IIHF sponsors Skoda, Nivea and Liqui Moly to threaten to withdraw their marbles before Belarus was finally withdrawn from the World Championship presentation.
Lukashenko’s political opponents argued that the IIHF move likely prevented another crackdown. They argued that the dictator would have wanted clean
Minsk from his opponents in the weeks leading up to the World Championship.
In short, unfortunately we do not live in the world of Boy-scouts as David Shoemaker and Karen O’Neil imagine.
The truth, and history shows it quite clearly, is that a Canadian presence at the Beijing Games will in no way weaken the position of the Chinese government. On the contrary. She will endorse the extremely violent actions he is taking.
The decision is therefore not difficult to take.
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