Nicola Beer: The EU should speak out in favor of Olympic boycott in 2022

EU Parliament Vice President Nicola Beer (FDP) has asked the EU to consider a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Brussels - "With a view to China's Xinjiang and Hong Kong policies, a debate over an Olympic boycott is inevitable," she said on Monday. The first sanctions against China in three decades, which were previously decided, are a strong common signal for a change of direction in EU-China relations. The time of the "laisser-faire" is over.

"In the sanctions debate, it is not taboos that help, but clear action," continued Beer. "A boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics must therefore now be on the table of the foreign ministers as a possible sanction." The experience of the 2008 Summer Games in China's capital gave no hope that the human rights situation in that country would improve through or after the Olympics.

Calls for a boycott of the 2022 Games were made after the leak of the Xinjiang papers, the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, China's Wolf warrior diplomacy, and the Uyghur genocide. In February 2021, the Chinese state-run outlet Global Times warned that China would "seriously sanction any country that follows a boycott." And in March 2021 Chinese spokesperson Guo Weimin stated that any attempt to boycott the Olympics would be doomed to fail.

Sources: Der Newsticker / Wikipedia