Raab says UK could boycott China’s Winter Olympics

DOMINIC RAAB has suggested Britain may boycott the Olympics for the first time over China’s treatment of the Uighur people.

The Foreign Secretary told MPS at a foreign affairs committee hearing it was “clear that there is evidence of serious and egregious human rights violations” of the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province and did not rule out withdrawing from the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022 as a consequence.

He said: “Generally speaking my instinct is to separate sport from diplomacy and politics, but there comes a point where that may not be possible.

“I would say let’s gather the evidence, work with our international partners and consider in the round what further action we need to take.”

The UK has never boycotted an Olympics, despite pressure not to participate in Berlin 1936 under Nazi Germany and in the Moscow Games in 1980 following Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan, when US athletes did not take part.

During the committee hearing, Graham Stringer, the Labour MP, reminded Mr Raab of “Margaret Thatcher’s problems of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow”. “She failed,” he said.

Mr Raab said “the detention, the mistreatment, the forced sterilisation” of the Uighur people was something the UK “can’t just turn away from”. “Obviously we’ll want to gather the evidence and work very closely with our international partners,” he said. “We need to be making the point to China that this is at odds with the responsibilities that come with a leading member of the international community.”

Asked if he would advise the Duke of Cambridge, who has previously gone to sporting events in an official capacity, against attending the Olympics, Mr Raab said: “That would be a corollary of the wider process of evaluating evidence and working with our international partners and whatever further decisions we come to.”

The UK has sought to increase pressure on China over human rights abuses. At the United Nations, the UK was one of 39 countries to raise concerns about the abuse of Uighur Muslims as well as the security crackdown in Hong Kong.

The UK and allies including Germany, France and the US agreed a statement that said they were “gravely concerned about the existence of a large network of ‘ political re- education’ camps” in Xinjiang where “credible reports indicated that over a million people have been arbitrarily detained”.

Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese ambassador to the UK, previously called allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang province the “lies of the century”.