Wednesday, December 8th, 2021
Beer demands a clear edge from the EU
Australia joins Olympic boycott
On Monday the US announced a diplomatic boycott of the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing. With Australia, another large nation joins the plan not to send government representatives to the games. The EU politician Nicola Beer demands even more from Europe.
Australia will also not send any government representatives to the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing (February 4th to 20th). This was announced by Prime Minister Scott Morrison. The country is thus joining the US diplomatic boycott, as New Zealand had previously done. However, the Australian athletes can continue to participate.
Relations between Australia and China are strained over a number of issues. Among other things, Morrison criticized the human rights situation in the Middle Kingdom and the frozen contacts at ministerial level. “Australia will not abandon their strong position in advocating Australia’s interests and of course it comes as no surprise that we will not be sending Australian officials to these games,” said Morrison.
China reacted with incomprehension. A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Australia’s capital, Canberra, said the decision “contradicts Canberra’s publicly expressed expectation of improving relations between China and Australia.” When the US government headed by President Joe Biden announced its diplomatic boycott on Monday, the Chinese State Department threatened that the US would “pay the price for its wrongdoing”. Meanwhile, the human rights organization Human Rights Watch welcomed Australia’s decision. China director Sophie Richardson called the boycott a “decisive step” in stopping China’s human rights abuses.
Beer calls for a complete boycott
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will not travel to the Winter Olympics either. “There are no plans of the Federal President to travel to Beijing,” said a spokeswoman for the Federal President of the ARD “Sportschau”. “These plans didn’t exist until the US announced their decision.”
Meanwhile, the European politician Nicola Beer has even spoken out in favor of a complete boycott of the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing. The European Union should “not only stay in the slipstream of the USA, but stand on its back legs for the observance of human rights and speak out in favor of a complete boycott of the Winter Games,” said the Vice-President of the European Parliament to the newspapers of the Funke media group. The diplomatic boycott demanded by the USA is coming late, said the FDP politician, and is “the least” that can be expected from the West. The Winter Olympics in China in February 2022 are “a wrong stage in the wrong place”.
Clear signals from the West in the direction of Beijing are long overdue, said Beer, referring to the “brutal suppression of the Uyghurs and the Chinese aggression against Hong Kong and Taiwan”. It could not be in the interests of either the US or the EU to “quietly watch Beijing at the Winter Games as a gigantic propaganda staging, while China’s apparatus openly and behind the scenes seriously violates human rights,” emphasized the parliamentary vice-president.