Canada’s Olympic, Paralympic teams will not boycott Games

Canada will not boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing despite calls from human rights organizations to do so.

A coalition of 180 rights groups want a boycott of Beijing’s Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games because of reported human rights abuses against ethnic minorities in China.

The games open in a year, Feb. 4, 2022, followed a month later by the Paralympic Games.

Canadian Olympic Committee chief executive David Shoemaker and Paralympic counterpart Karen O’neill spoke to The Canadian Press on the ineffectiveness of a boycott, as well as the importance of Canada’s participation in Beijing.

Canada joined a U.s.-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow in protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.

The Soviets not only remained in Afghanistan for another eight years, but led a revenge boycott of the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

“We only really have two choices here,” Shoemaker said. “The choices are to pull out, to barricade ourselves, to divide, to further polarize and say out of protest we’re not going to go, or to engage and be part of a conversation, to amplify voices, to speak our mind on things that are important to us and to participate in the Games. “When faced with those choices and the lessons learned from Moscow in 1980 and L.A. in 1984, the choice is clear.”

The rights coalition representing Tibetans, Uighurs, Inner Mongolians, residents of Hong Kong and others has issued an open letter to governments calling for a boycott of the Olympics “to ensure they are not used to embolden the Chinese government’s appalling rights abuses and crackdowns on dissent.”

Some Canadians have written on social media and comment forums their country should boycott Beijing because of the continued imprisonment of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

Their arrest was seen as retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in 2018 on a United States warrant. The U.S. wants her extradited to face fraud charges.

Shoemaker calls these issues “deeply concerning,” but believes the majority of Canadians want their athletes competing in Beijing.

He cites the 91 per cent of the country’s population that watched the 2016 Summer Games in Rio on TV, and the 75 per cent who viewed the ’18 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, despite the 13hour time difference. “Having said that, we don’t want to minimize what’s happening in the host country,” Shoemaker said.

“We have serious concerns in particular about what’s happening to Muslim Uighurs in Western China, and have discussed that with the Canadian government and the Canadian ambassador to China,” he said.

“They’ve assured us that it’s their top priority and being addressed on a government-togovernment basis.”

Canada’s participation in the Paralympic Games raises the profile of and changes perceptions about the disabled in the host country, in Canada and around the world, O’neill said. “Our athletes are capable of great things and the impact on the overall message of access and inclusion in the local community, that’s an additional overlay from the para side of things.”