{"id":32333,"date":"2022-03-02T01:06:40","date_gmt":"2022-03-02T07:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/?p=32333"},"modified":"2022-03-02T01:06:40","modified_gmt":"2022-03-02T07:06:40","slug":"beijing-olympics-began-amid-boycotts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/2022\/03\/02\/beijing-olympics-began-amid-boycotts\/","title":{"rendered":"Beijing Olympics Began Amid Boycotts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics kicked off February 4th with the opening ceremony held at the city\u2019s National Stadium, making Beijing the first city to hold both winter and summer Olympics. The running of this Olympics, however, has been altered in the face of COVID-19. Spectators will be limited with no in-person internationals allowed, and other spectators subject to strict COVID-19 prevention measures. Further, those involved in the event itself will be confined to a \u201cclosed loop<\/a>\u201d of transportation, accommodation, and venues as a part of additional mitigation efforts.<\/p>\n

For many countries, worries of COVID-19 in Beijing have been superseded by protests against China\u2019s human rights record. Some nations have declined to attend the Games, and others have diplomatically boycotted them with the US among these. American athletes will be permitted to compete, but White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a briefing<\/a> Monday that \u201cthe Biden administration will not send any diplomatic or official representation\u201d to Beijing because of China\u2019s \u201congoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.\u201d Psaki continued that, though \u201cthe athletes on Team USA have [the Biden Administration\u2019s] full support,\u201d the Administration \u201cwill not be contributing to the fanfare of the Games,\u201d as \u201cUS diplomatic or official representation would treat these Games as business as usual in the face of [China\u2019s] egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang.\u201d<\/p>\n

Countries that will not be attending\u2014but are not boycotting\u2014include Norway, Sweden, and Germany, whose leaders, traditionally present at the Olympics, will sit these Games out.<\/p>\n

Other countries have decided not to attend because of the pandemic, or both the pandemic and diplomatic protest.<\/p>\n

This protest comes as upwards of a million Uighurs have been imprisoned in line with China\u2019s \u201cintensive counterterrorism and de-radicalization efforts.<\/a>\u201d The Uighurs are a mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking ethnic group primarily hailing from Xinjiang, a northwestern region that has been claimed by China since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power in 1949. Given the CCP\u2019s atheism, past Uighur independence movements, and the CCP’s fear of separatism, the CCP perceives the Uighurs as a threat<\/a>. This perception has led to the creation of what China has termed<\/a> \u201cvocational education and training centers,\u201d camps China claims promote, among Uighurs, \u201cknowledge of the law through education.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though \u201cre-education efforts\u201d began around 2014<\/a>, and the CCP-Uighur conflict long before that, the camps have significantly expanded in the time since. Information on what happens to imprisoned Uighurs is limited, but escapees have reported<\/a> having to pledge loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party, renounce Islam, and learn Mandarin, which is echoed by leaked government documents<\/a>. Some escapees have also said<\/a> that they were monitored constantly by cameras and microphones, while others recall torture, interrogation, sexual abuse, or rape.<\/p>\n

In response to the US\u2019 diplomatic boycott, the Chinese Embassy in Washington tweeted<\/a>: \u201cIn fact, no one would care about whether these people come or not, and it has no impact whatsoever on the #Beijing2022 to be successfully held.\u201d Australia, upon announcing that it, too, would boycott the Games, was said<\/a> to have \u201cfully expose[d] that it blindly follows the US [and] not know right from wrong\u201d by the Chinese state-run Global Times<\/i>. As the US and Australia are both slotted to host the upcoming Olympic Games, there is potential for China to impose boycotts in response.<\/p>\n

Additionally, a handful of countries are boycotting Beijing in diplomatic protest of other events. Kosovo and Lithuania will not be sending diplomatic delegations because of the state of their relationships with China, which have been colored by the countries\u2019 ties with Taiwan. India, too, has declined to send officials to Beijing after a Chinese military commander who was reportedly involved with deadly conflict on China\u2019s border with India, was named Olympic torchbearer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics kicked off February 4th with the opening ceremony held at the city\u2019s National Stadium, making Beijing the first city to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":576,"featured_media":32334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2724,1],"tags":[3391,2210],"coauthors":[3434],"class_list":["post-32333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-worldnews","tag-international-relations","tag-olympics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/576"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32333"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32753,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32333\/revisions\/32753"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32333"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=32333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}