China has threatened sanctions against Britain and any other country that will boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing over the alleged ‘genocide’ of Uighur Muslims.
British MPs, including Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, have called for the GB team to boycott Beijing’s alleged “ethnic cleansing” of Uighurs who have been imprisoned and subjected to political “re-education” in Xinjiang.
But Hu Xijin, the editor of the state-controlled Global Times, warned on Sunday that “China will seriously sanction any country that follows this call.”
“Boycotting the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, an unpopular idea, will not receive widespread support,” he stated.
Davey responded today by saying that “we cannot be harassed by the Chinese government,” adding that “we must use all the levers we have.”
A year to finish: the Olympic rings are lit in the Beijing Olympic Tower last Friday, a year before the start of the 2022 winter show
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, pictured, has responded to the threat of sanctions today by saying “the Chinese government cannot be harassed.”
The Lib Dems said over the weekend that British athletes should not be “part of a propaganda exercise” for communist China in 2022.
Davey compared the upcoming Games to a notorious photograph from the 1930s in which the England football team made Nazi greetings before a friendly in Berlin.
“No one can be proud of the failures of the past, so today we need to act,” he said.
Responding today to the threat of sanctions, he said: “What we hear from China is simple intimidation and we cannot be harassed by the Chinese government while committing ethnic cleansing and genocide.
“No one wants sanctions, but we cannot allow our athletes and businesses and our country to be harassed by a government that is committing genocide.”
He added: “Should we ask ourselves if we could look future generations in the eye and say we did everything we could against what appears to be a massive crime against humanity?
We have made very reasonable requests. The whole world community makes reasonable requests and the Chinese government should not hide from them.
“If they have nothing to hide, they should allow independent United Nations monitors to come in and verify or not these claims. We have seen reports from international media, human rights organizations and the BBC showing the evidence. accounts to the Chinese authorities ”.
Labor MP Chris Bryant has also called for a boycott and told the Guardian that “I can’t see why anyone would want to go to the Beijing Winter Olympics.”
“I think it’s extraordinary that the British government seems to have no backbone,” he said.
“I think the British Olympic Association should call for the Winter Olympics to be moved and if it doesn’t move, we should boycott them.”
A watchtower at a high-security facility in Xinjiang where an estimated one million people were detained in re-education facilities that have been compared to Nazi concentration camps.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab did not rule out a boycott of the 2022 Games when he was questioned by a parliamentary committee last year.
“In general, my instinct is to separate sport from diplomacy and politics, but there comes a point where this may not be possible,” he told MPs.
“I would say that we collect the evidence, that we work with our international partners, that we consider in the round what other actions we need to take.”
Human rights groups have expressed concern about the 2022 event since it was granted in Beijing in 2015, seven years after the city hosted the Summer Games.
Since then, Western relations with China have deteriorated on a long list of issues, including Uyghurs, but also the coronavirus and Hong Kong pandemic.
But currently the United States has no plans to boycott the Games, and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee said it opposed the move.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said last week that “we are not currently talking about changing our stance or our plans regarding the Beijing Olympics.”
The famous United States boycotted the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, with many U.S. allies joining the protest.
This caused the USSR and most of its Eastern bloc allies to retaliate when the Los Angeles Games were held four years later.
But Britain stayed out of the geopolitical struggle by participating in both events and also rejected calls to boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Trump-era U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (pictured) used his last hours in office to officially label China’s treatment of Uighurs as “genocide.”
The UK government says there is “growing” evidence of “serious human rights violations” in Xinjiang, including forced labor and illegal detention.
China is believed to have imprisoned more than a million people in an extensive network of detention centers that has been compared to Nazi concentration camps.
Human rights groups say Uyghurs are subjected to forced sterilization and political brainwashing in the camps.
In his last hours in office, the Donald Trump administration last month officially labeled China’s treatment of Uighurs as “genocide.”
“We are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy the Uighurs by the Chinese party-state,” said former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The Joe Biden administration has said it will review the resolution of the “genocide” for procedural reasons, but has not questioned the merits of the allegations.
China rejects the allegations, denying the existence of “re-education camps” and claiming that Uighurs live in “peace and satisfaction, unity and harmony.”
Beijing also claims that the Uyghur population has grown in recent decades and uses it as if to show that the claims of ‘genocide’ cannot be true.