Olympic Athletes From Multiple Countries to Boycott Opening Ceremony in Beijing: Report
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Olympic athletes will boycott the opening ceremony at the Winter Olympics in Beijing on Friday, reported The Washington Post on Wednesday.
According to the Post’s Josh Rogin:
Olympic athletes from multiple countries who want to show solidarity with the victims of the Chinese government’s human rights abuses have been quietly preparing to boycott the Opening Ceremonies, according to human rights activists who have been helping to educate and organize them.
For several months, U.S.-based activists have been meeting with Olympic athletes from several Western countries to urge them to speak out on the Chinese government’s mass atrocities and severe repression of Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers and other groups inside China. The athletes, facing the threat of punishment from the Chinese government if they talk about human rights, have almost all avoided addressing the subject in public.
The athletes have also come under pressure from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its sponsors to avoid controversy. But if they don’t feel safe speaking out, the activists told them, skipping the Opening and Closing Ceremonies would at least deny the Chinese government the ability to use those ceremonies to legitimize its abuses and whitewash its crimes. Activists told me that athletes from at least two Western teams confirmed they will not be attending the Opening Ceremonies as their personal form of protest.
Rogin wrote that “[t]he exact number of athletes planning to boycott the Opening Ceremonies is unknown” and that “[a]ctivists told me several athletes expressed fear of being arrested by Chinese authorities or being punished by their home nation’s Olympics organization if they protested at all.
“Some athletes told the activists they would explain why they skipped the Opening Ceremonies only after the games ended, remaining silent while in China to avoid punishment.”
A number of countries, including the United States, have already announced that they would diplomatically boycott the games over China’s human rights record.
