Attention Turns From Tokyo Olympics to Beijing 2022 Amid Calls for Boycott

Activists including members of the local Hong Kong, Tibetan and Uyghur communities hold up banners and placards in Melbourne on June 23, 2021, calling on the Australian government to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics over China's human rights record. (Photo by William WEST / AFP) Photo by WILLIAM WEST/AFP via Getty Images

As the Tokyo Summer Olympics closed on Aug. 8, attention has turned back to the controversy surrounding the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

The Tokyo Olympics games ran relatively smoothly during the COVID-19 pandemic, although it was not open to spectators.

The United States scored the most gold medals with 39, with China coming in second with 38. The United States also ranked first in the overall medal tally with 113 medals, including 41 silver medals, and 33 bronze medals—far surpassing China, again in second place, with 88 medals.

Players from the United States react after defeating Brazil to win the gold medal in women's volleyball at the 2020 Summer Olympics, in Tokyo, Japan, on Aug. 8, 2021. Frank Augstein/AP Photo

As the host country, Japan performed the best in its history since participating in the Olympics, winning a total of 58 medals, including 27 gold.

While the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus causing the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging around the world, there are only six months before the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The pandemic is just one of the problems that the Beijing Winter Olympics is facing.

CTV, Canada’s largest private television network, conducted a poll of thousands of Canadians during the Tokyo Olympics. It announced its results on the closing day of the Tokyo Olympics showing that more than 60 percent of respondents supported a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics.

In recent years, the Chinese regime has been accused by human rights experts and organizations, liberal democratic nations, and United Nations experts of mass detention of at least one million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

Policies amounting to cultural extermination and experiences of political brainwashing has been characterized by U.S. administrations as “genocide.”

But while the ruling CCP continues to push back against the “genocide” accusations, more and more international organizations and countries are calling for the 2022 Winter Olympics to be moved from Beijing.

Activists including members of the local Hong Kong, Tibetan and Uyghur communities hold up banners and placards in Melbourne, Australia, on June 23, 2021, calling on the Australian government to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics over China's human rights record. William West/AFP via Getty Images

In February, more than 180 human rights organizations issued a joint open letter urging world leaders to take a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing, including not sending leaders or dignitaries to China to participate in any activity in protest of the regime’s mass human rights abuses.

The letter cited accusations of serious human rights violations by the Chinese communist regime in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia. It also pointed out that Beijing has increased threats to regional security across the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and the Sino-Indian border in recent years.

However, on the grounds of political neutrality and an inability to change a country’s legal and political system, the International Olympic Committee refused to the request from international organizations to change the venue of the 2022 Winter Olympics from Beijing to other countries.

So far, no government has officially announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, but lawmakers in the United States, Canada, the European Union, and the United Kingdom are all calling on their governments to take action.