Chinese-Canadian groups renewed their call this week for a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics on the occasion of the 100-day countdown to the top international sporting event in February.
“The reason for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics is clear: It’s because the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] continues to do evil,” Ningyu Huang, co-ordinator of the group China Human Rights Watch, told The Epoch Times.
“The CCP has committed evil for more than 70 years, it has never intended to stop doing evil, instead it intensified doing evil.”
On the evening of Oct. 27, Huang’s group took part in a protest at the Jack Poole Plaza in Vancouver together with a few other Chinese-Canadian groups to call for a boycott of the Olympics. The protest was timed to coincide with a 100-day countdown celebration at the Plaza, held by the pro-Beijing National Congress of Chinese Canadians along with the Chinese Consulate.
“The CCP is an imminent menace to the whole world. Its persecution of Falun Gong is an example. It commits genocide against the Uyghers in Xingjiang, and right now it is expanding its power around the world,” Huang said.
“Wherever the CCP reaches, it exports its dictatorial ideology. The CCP is implementing its one-party rule not only in China but also in Hong Kong, and it is attempting to take control of Taiwan. The CCP is aiming at the whole world.”
‘Olympics of Shame’
Former Justice Minister Irwin Cotler said the Chinese communist regime “should not be rewarded another Olympics after it breached all the international commitments it made last time for the 2008 Olympics.”“We remember when China held the 2008 Olympics and they made certain undertakings that they would abide by the rule of law. The result was that they arrested Falun Gong practitioners and that they increased the number of political prisoners. They breached all the international commitments in the 2008 Olympics,” Cotler said in an interview.
“There’s no reason to believe that they won’t behave differently now. And let us remember that in 1936, when the Olympics were held in Germany before the holocaust began, they were already then referred to as the Olympics of shame.”
Cotler said the 2022 Games are scheduled to be held in China at a time when a plethora of rights infractions are being perpetrated by the regime.
“Mass atrocities targeting the Uyghers, … and the suppression in Hong Kong, let alone the persecution and prosecution of the Falun Gong, the menacing of Taiwan, the repression of Tibetans, and imprisoning more journalists than in any other country in the world,” he said.
“We shouldn’t be rewarding them with the Olympics because it indulges a culture of impunity.”
He suggested moving the Games to another country, noting that Canada “would be an ideal location” given that the upcoming event is a Winter Olympics.
“I don’t want to see any of the athletes punished,” he said. “They should be able to participate in the Olympics.”
On Feb. 18, a resolution was adopted in Parliament with a provision to call on the International Olympic Committee “to move the 2022 Olympic Games if the Chinese government continues” its genocide gainst Ugheurs.
The resolution noted that tyrannical governments “use the Olympics as an opportunity to glorify their own regime and to show their own people that they are strong and powerful.”
‘We Have to Be Here’
Huang believes the Chinese Communist Party wants to use every opportunity, including the Olympics, to burnish its image on the world stage and to spread its ideology.“The CCP is borrowing the torch of the Olympics to spread the CCP ideology to other countries, so we have to be here. We and other communities believe that we have to stand here, to call out the CCP and to call for the boycotting of the Olympics in Beijing,” he said.
“The CCP wants to deceive not only Chinese, but also overseas Chinese and even western people. It uses every opportunity to whitewash its image by turning black into white and hide its atrocities and evil deeds with lies.”
With reporting by Fanny Qiu.
