MPs urge Johnson to follow US in boycott of China’s Olympics

BORIS Johnson was last night under pressure to follow the United States with a diplomatic boycott of the next year’s Beijing Winter Olympics.

The move to protest against Chinese human rights abuses, announced by the White House yesterday, will not stop US athletes from competing but drew the ire of Beijing, which promised ‘firm counter measures’.

Tory MPs called for the UK to take a similar stance, but No 10 said no decision had yet been taken as to whether to attend or not.

Referencing the plight of Uighur Muslims in China, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said: ‘The Biden administration will not send any diplomatic or official representation to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games given the PCR’s [People’s Republic of China] ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.

‘The athletes on Team USA have our full support. We will be behind them 100 per cent as we cheer them on from home.’ Last night former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said the UK should ‘absolutely’ boycott the games. He also referred to China’s ‘industrial-scale human rights abuses in the Uighur region’ and raised the ‘arrest of peaceful democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong’.

Mr Duncan Smith added: ‘That is why the UK Government must now go one further and publicly confirm that no ministers, diplomats or other British officials will attend the games.’

And MP Tim Loughton said: ‘The British Government should now follow suit without delay and confirm the diplomatic boycott which the Commons unanimously voted for earlier.’ Last month Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg told MPs that ‘no tickets have been booked’ to go to the Games in February.

An International Olympic Committee spokesman said: ‘The presence of government officials and diplomats is a purely political decision for each government.’