Canada joins U.S. and allies in Beijing Olympics boycott

Canada will be part of america, the UK and Australia in a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics over human rights considerations, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mentioned on December 8.

The announcement got here after the White Home, the Australian Authorities and the U.Ok. authorities confirmed diplomatic boycotts of the Winter Video games in February to protest Chinese language human rights abuses. China has vowed to react with “agency countermeasures”. Mr. Trudeau mentioned his Authorities has been talks with allies about it in latest months.

“We’re extraordinarily involved by the repeated human rights violations by the Chinese language Authorities,” Mr. Trudeau mentioned.

“They shouldn’t be shocked we is not going to be sending any diplomatic illustration.” The diplomatic strikes by Canada, the U.S., Britain and Australia don’t have an effect on their athletes’ means to compete within the video games.

Rights teams have referred to as for a full-blown boycott of the Beijing Winter Video games, citing Chinese language human rights abuses in opposition to its Uyghur minority within the northwest Xinjiang Province, which some have referred to as genocide. Additionally they level to Beijing’s suppression of democratic protests in Hong Kong and a sweeping crackdown on dissent within the semi-autonomous territory.

The White Home confirmed on Monday that it was staging a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming video games and Australia adopted swimsuit on Wednesday, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison saying it was “in Australia’s nationwide curiosity”.

Relations between Canada and China have been poor since China arrested two Canadians in China in Dec. 2018, shortly after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Applied sciences’ chief monetary officer and the daughter of the corporate’s founder, on a U.S. extradition request. Many international locations labelled China’s motion “hostage politics”, whereas China has described the fees in opposition to Huawei and Meng as a politically motivated try to carry again China’s financial and technological improvement.

China, the U.S. and Canada basically accomplished a high-stakes prisoner swap earlier this 12 months however the popularity of the Chinese language Authorities has been severely tarnished in Canada.

“Issues round arbitrary detention are actual and shared by many international locations around the globe,” Mr. Trudeau mentioned.

Canadian International Minister Mélanie Joly mentioned extra international locations must take comparable motion.

“You will need to ship a robust sign to China,” Ms. Joly mentioned. “Human rights violations are usually not acceptable.”