Beijing should not host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games

New Brunswick Southwest Member of Parliament John Williamson responded to the International Olympic Committee’s refusal to denounce the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing genocide of its Uyghur Muslim population as well as the Olympic committee’s failure to relocate the 2022 Winter Games from Beijing:

The Chinese Communist Party’s horrific human rights abuses against China’s Uyghur Muslim population have been well documented and, in February, the Parliament of Canada voted 266-to-0 that mainland China's actions in its western Xinjiang region meet the definition of genocide set out in the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention.

Lawmakers and the news media, along with anyone willing to look, have seen reports and heard testimony of Uyghur family separation, show trials, mass detention, campaigns of gang rape, forced injections and sterilization, widespread slave labour, concentration camps and mass murders. This happened under or at the direction of China’s state police. Credible estimates place the number of Uyghurs in concentration camps at one-to-two million people. The world has not witnessed anything like it since the mid-20th century.

The Chinese Communist Party also abandoned the Sino-British Joint Declaration that had guaranteed democratic, speech and legal rights to Hong Kong’s 7.5 million residents. Beijing does not recognize these inalienable human rights and is undermining or outright cancelling them in Hong Kong. This is unacceptable and another violation of international law.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has released vague statements assuring the world community that Beijing has presented proof that human rights clauses in the IOC charter are being respected. Exactly what constitutes this proof is unclear, given that there has otherwise been no public indication that Beijing has lessened its human rights violations or that it will do so before February 2022 when the Olympic Games are scheduled to take place.

The IOC must do the right thing to maintain its global credibility as arbiters of international athletic competition by:

(1) Revoking their acceptance of Beijing’s bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics;

(2) Immediately beginning the process of coordinating a suitable alternative host city so that these games might take place;

(3) Postponing or rescheduling the 2022 games should the relocation process require it; and

(4) Never allow a nation state complicit in human rights violations to use the Olympic Games as a propaganda exercise.

Please sign the petition to the House of Commons, Parliament of Canada, if you agree Beijing should not host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games: