Why We Should Boycott the Beijing 2022 Olympics

If the Olympics are intended to promote human flourishing then holding the games in China would only undermine this in view of the ambiguity that would follow, since the games would be held in a country - for which there is overwhelming evidence - that commits genocide, forced organ harvesting, forced disappearances, and other injustices. China would use the games to mask these abuses, promote disinformation, and manipulate participation in the games to justify its policies.

The Uyghur Tribunal 2021 concluded that China has committed genocide in Xinjiang.

The tribunal accepted evidence for:

- High-level statements of intent and general plan directed by Xi Jinping.

- Government-mandated Home-stays. Since 2014, China has forcibly deployed Han cadres to reside in Uyghur homes as monitors.

- Torture

- Mass Internment

- Forcible transfer of Uyghur children to state run facilities

- Mass Birth-Prevention Strategy

The Tribunal also noted evidence from Ethan Gutman of forced organ harvesting committed against the Uyghurs and other ethnic groups, the Falun Gong and other religious groups.

The Uyghur Tribunal 2021 conclusion reinforces previous investigations of genocide in Xinjiang.

The Final Report of the China Tribunal (17th June, 2019) concluded that Crimes Against Humanity against the Falun Gong and the Uyghurs has been proved beyond reasonable doubt.

Following the China Tribunal report a submission regarding genocide was lodged with the ICC naming 30 CCP members including Xi Jinping.

Newlines Institute also assembled a panel of leading experts to assess the evidence about the situation in Xinjiang and concluded that China bears State responsibility for committing genocide against the Uyghurs.

Newlines Institute found an intent to destroy the Uyghurs as an identifiable group - inferred from objective facts including official statements, a general plan, State policy and law, a pattern of conduct, and repeated destructive acts, which have a logical sequence and result — destruction of the Uyghurs

In addition, fifty genocide and atrocity prevention organizations and senior experts found that the measures targeting Uyghurs meet the threshold of acts constitutive of genocide.

The following institutions have also found that China's treatment of the Uyghurs amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity, including:

- The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect,

- The US Congressional Executive Commission on China,

- The Simon Skjodt Centre for the Prevention of Genocide, and

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

The overwhelming body of evidence, and the uniform voice of over fifty international experts and organisations demand that we acknowledge that China is committing genocide, and crimes against humanity against its ethnic and religious minorities; and that we must take whatever actions we can, at least by way of sanction, to influence a change in China's policies - so, at a minimum, a boycott of the Beijing 2022 Olympics follows.

In response to these public investigations, several countries have declared that China is committing genocide, and crimes against humanity, and several countries have announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing 2022 Olympic games.

The olympics is not just an emotional issue, it has geo-political consequences. The CCP will use the Beijing Olympics as a means to an end. A successful Beijing 2022 Olympic games will fuel rising Chinese nationalism behind Xi Jinping who will leverage the success of the games to demonstrate to the CCP that he has power over the West, and that will add to his claims for a third term.

The combination of overcoming those calling for a boycott of the Beijing 2022 Olympics, together with the success of the event may translate into a more aggressive foreign policy where retribution becomes the norm.

China has used coercive diplomacy over 150 times against foreign countries since 2010. Over half of these during the past 2 years.

Economic coercion is a core element of Chinese statecraft: the CCP will take the opportunity to punish any country for refusing to give it a right to affect or veto government policy.

For example, recently, Lithuania allowed Taiwan to name its Lithuanian representative office as the ‘Taiwan Representative Office’ to which China objected. China threatened sanctions against any country that traded with Lithuania. In response, on Dec 22, the German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce warned the Lithuanian government that German investors may be forced to close factories in Lithuania if Vilnius does not accede to Chinese demands that it rename a representative office of the Taiwanese government. - clearly Germany’s future is not Europe, but alignment with totalitarianism in China.

The CCP aims for a global re-orientation, and subservience, to a China-centric global order.

An Olympic boycott follows from the moral necessity of critically thinking about the situation in China today; and would be a first step in the broader rejection of the instrumentality, injustice and inequality that seem the norm in society today. Critical thinking reveals the truth about abuses of power that marginalise the majority of people worldwide, exposes many to exploitation, and which subjects some religious and ethnic groups to inhumanity and even extermination.

Boycotting the Olympics is a decent response to the evidence of genocide and forced organ harvesting in China; the potential for a replay of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and the alarming similarities between China’s policies and direction with those of Nazi Germany.

Hitler was so impressed with China that he offered scholarships to Chinese to attend German military academies. And the feeling is mutual: CCP scholars have incorporated the National Socialist thought of Carl Schmitt into its political thinking.

At Nuremberg, German industrialists claimed that they were just conducting ordinary business, that they were ignorant of crimes against humanity, or were frightened of non-compliance.

But in truth, they cooperated with the Nazi government to exploit concentration camp labour, and sited factories with the specific goal of leveraging this free and disposable workforce. They had planned, profited from, and made possible the Nazi war machine and its genocide.

Likewise in China today, some Western companies have forced labour in their supply chains, but they all feign ignorance of forced labour, and the oppression of ethnic and religious groups throughout China, and even act a China apologists through international media.?

Western companies in China have planned, and profited from the mass-scale transfer of factories, IP, and technical skills to China to the extent of causing the de-industrialisation of the West which made possible the rise of China into a threatening, genocidal power.

There are universal principals at stake in China for which we have an obligation to defend. For over two decades, the West invested in China’s economic rise, and continues to do so even as evidence exposes the involvement of Western companies and technology in China’s internment of ethnic groups, and forced labour.?

Western failure to confront China over the pandemic, the internment of up to 3 million non-Han people, forced organ harvesting, and forced disappearances is due to unprecedented economic dependence on China driven by Chinese mercantilism, and supported by Western greed. And China has been able to influence Western policy, as China leverages its infiltration of most sectors and institutions of Western societies.

We must accept a shared responsibility for what is happening in China; participation in the Olympics renders us complicit in genocide, forced disappearances, and forced organ harvesting; instead, we have a responsibility to act against China’s inhumane policies towards religious and ethnic groups.

The ‘Rome Statute’ refers to the obligation on governments to take action when evidence shows that crimes against humanity and genocide are being pursued in other countries. There only needs to be reasonable grounds for belief that these crimes are taking place to justify taking action; legal proof is not required, the absence of which should not be used for inaction.?

It is reasonable to expect that the IOC be aligned with universal principles, and the Rome Statute. But also, awarding the 2022 Winter Olympics to China is incompatible with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which are grounded in human rights. The IOC seems oblivious to these institutions. However, it is incumbent upon governments to boycott the 2022 Beijing Olympics so as not to undermine their commitment to universal principles, The Rome Statute, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The IOC and by extension the 2022 Beijing Olympics can not be separated from the trampling of universal principles in China today.

In 2019, The IOC announced that Hengyuanxiang Group would supply the official uniforms to the IOC Members and administration for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, and Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022. However, the Chinese textiles company has a factory in Xinjiang that openly advertises its use of Xinjiang cotton - involving Uyghur slave labour

The IOC’s collusion with the CCP goes back many years. Geneva 2017, Xi conspired with Guterres of the UN, and Thomas Bach of the IOC to close down the Geneva-based UN Office on Sport for Development and Peace (UNOSDP), and increase power and control for the IOC and China. The China controlled UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs would take over the portfolio of the UNOSDP. And the IOC took on a new role in the sport and development sector with its newly created Commission for Public Affairs and Social Development through Sport - a complete takeover of the UNOSDP.

The human cost of hosting the Olympics seems incompatible with the Olympic spirit, but to which the IOC is completely indifferent. In the lead-up to the 2008 Summer Olympics, China forcibly displaced 1.5 million residents of Beijing to make room for the games. The IOC awarded China the 2022 Olympics while China holds up to 3 million Uyghurs and others in concentration camps, perpetrates forced organ harvesting against these people.

Recently, the IOC implicated itself in the CCP’s manipulations of Peng Shuai. In an interview with CNN, Steve Simon, CEO of the WTA confirmed that he had attempted several times to contact Peng, but those efforts failed. He also reiterated his assessment that the IOC video call with Peng was orchestrated, and that Peng was under duress.

Yet the IOC confirmed that they held a second call with Peng.?

Why would Peng not receive contact from the WTA to which she was supposed to have written an email regarding her allegations? (The evidence suggests that the email was likely fabricated by CGTN). And why receive calls from the IOC, an organisation she did not attempt to contact? It was the WTA that was leading global concern about Peng, while the IOC was completely mute.

The first video call between Thomas Bach of the IOC and Peng was likely orchestrated by Bach and Xi Jinping out of fear of a global boycott of the Olympics. Peng appeared in a 30-minute video call with Bach, accompanied by a Chinese sports official who was once the Communist Party secretary of the Tennis Administration Centre of the General Administration of Sport of China.

With a CCP official on the call, Peng could not talk freely. The IOC have not pursued Peng's allegations, it has not aligned with the WTA, and the EU in demanding verifiable proof that she is free. Yet, on the basis of a CCP choreographed video call, in the presence of a CCP minder, the IOC publicly stated that Peng is OK.

Bach was allowed to contact Peng because Xi Jinping could rely on Bach to follow the script; and that is why the WTA were blocked from contacting Peng.

The IOC rendered itself complicit in the CCP's disappearance/house arrest/manipulation of Peng Shuai; has participated in orchestrating 'proof of life' videos, and disseminating CCP propaganda.

By withdrawing from China the WTA shows that international organisations - and governments - can and should act with moral clarity. IOC claims that they can not influence government policy is a deceit: the issue is about moral clarity, not influence over governments. But, the IOC does have a responsibility for outcomes, and that includes not allowing a repeat of 1936. Unless the IOC follows the WTA it will confirm its own moral bankruptcy as it once again aligns with a totalitarian, genocidal regime.