Australia will join the United States in a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympic Winter Games in 2022, said Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Wednesday (8).
Morrison said that while Australian athletes still participate in the Games in February, the government will keep official representatives at home.
At a press conference in Sydney, the Australian leader said that “human rights abuses and issues in Xinjiang” were some of the concerns raised by the Australian government with Beijing.
“I am very happy to talk to the Chinese government about these issues, and there was no obstacle for this to happen on our side, but the Chinese government has consistently failed to take the opportunities to meet with us and resolve,” Morrison said.
For months, activists have been calling for a boycott of the Games over human rights abuses by the Chinese government in Xinjiang and Tibet and its political repression in Hong Kong.
Beijing has been accused by the US and other Western nations of detaining more than a million Muslim-majority Uighurs in detention centers in Xinjiang, where some former detainees claim they were tortured, raped or forcibly sterilized.
China denies the allegations, saying the camps are re-education centers designed to combat separatism and Islamic terrorism in the country’s western region.
The Chinese embassy in Australia criticized the decision to boycott the Games and said it would not improve already cold relations between the two countries.
“As we all know, the blame for the current plight of China-Australia relations lies directly with the Australian side,” the statement said.
While the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said in January that granting a country the Games did not mean endorsing its “human rights standards,” activists said giving the high-profile event to China added legitimacy to the Communist Party’s actions.
Morrison’s announcement follows a decision by the Biden administration not to send an official US delegation to the Games – the first country to confirm a diplomatic boycott.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the US action was a statement against “the ongoing genocide in China and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.”
American athletes will still be allowed to compete in the Games, but the government will not send government officials. The same policy applies to the 2022 Paralympic Winter Games scheduled for March.
The US will host the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, while the 2032 Games will take place in Brisbane, Australia.
Reference: CNN Brasil
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