Canadian committee against boycott

TORONTO A boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics would not bring home two Canadian men detained in China for more than two years or force a change to China's human rights record but would only punish athletes, the Canadian Olympic Committee said Thursday.

With the Games scheduled to start in one year, the committee put out an op-ed confirming a commitment to take part as calls grow to boycott the event or have it moved from China.

“My regular communication with athletes is via athletes commissions and we have had a few conversations on this topic, but I must confess they don't last very long,” committee chief executive David Shoemaker told Reuters.

“Our Canadian athletes are very much looking forward to the next two Olympic Games in Tokyo and Beijing.”

The United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee echoed a similar position on Wednesday, saying they oppose boycotts because “they have been shown to negatively impact athletes while not effectively addressing global issues.”

A group of U.S. senators, however, has a very different view, introducing a resolution calling on the International Olympic Committee to move the Beijing Olympics following the U.S. designating that the Chinese government was perpetrating a genocide by repressing Uighur Muslims in its Xinjiang region.

Canada's participation at the Beijing Games has been further put in the spotlight by China's detention of businessman Michael Spavor and former diplomat Michael Kovrig in what Canada views as retribution for the arrest of Huawei Technologies chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. warrant.

The IOC is no stranger to boycotts or the threat of one. The U.S. led a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Games over the Soviet Union's presence in Afghanistan. Four years later in a tit-for-tat response, the Soviet Union led a boycott of the 1984 L.A. Olympics. Reuters