Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale
July 15th, 2021
I don’t like boycotts. They’re expensive, ineffective, and for the most part they punish the wrong people.
Sporting boycotts? To borrow a phrase from our Prime Minister, I’m “instinctively against” them. Sport is a universal and unifying source of enjoyment. Mixing it with politics results in all kinds of absurdities, ably demonstrated by this MP who refused to watch England in their first cup final in over fifty years because the team took the knee.
Yet here I am charged with defending a boycott of the Beijing Games. Well, a partial boycott at least. Why?
Because, these Games are different.
Three core arguments: one from severity, one from complicity, and one from context.
First, severity. The PRC is, I believe, a genocidal state. There is little credible disagreement over the fact that the PRC has committed at least three of the punishable acts set out in the Genocide Convention. The debate - a fierce one - surrounds whether or not these acts have been prosecuted with the intent to destroy. Sadly, no court has the power to force China into the dock. Meanwhile Uyghurs have to endure PRC officials exhorting followers to “Break their lineage, break their roots”.
While the international judicial system remains impotent, two major legal opinions have concluded that there is good evidence of the PRC’s genocidal intent, as have the Canadian, Belgian, UK, and Dutch Parliaments. If the diplomatic community can stand against LGBT discrimination in Russia, as it did during the Sochi Games, it has no choice but to extend similar solidarity to those suffering the most serious of all international crimes in China.
Second, complicity. Unlike many other sporting events, China’s manufacturing ubiquity (together with its legal environment) means that at least four of the eleven main sponsors of the winter olympics are accused of facilitating or profiting from Uyghur forced labour. Many of the sponsors are deeply, inextricably attached to the PRC state, some of which play key roles in the PRC’s ruthless campaign against religious and ethnic minorities. The usual efforts to separate the Olympics from the behaviour of the host state therefore fail.
Third, the argument from context. According to the UK, the PRC is in “ongoing breach” of its treaty obligations regarding Hong Kong. The EU, Canada, US, and UK have imposed sanctions on PRC officials for their role in anti-Uyghur persecutions. The PRC stands before us unrepentant and naked in its criminality, daring the international community to put its money where its mouth is. There could be no clearer confirmation of the PRC's suspicion that we prioritise trade over human rights than the community of global democracies sending - for the first time - its diplomats to a Games hosted by a state credibly accused of genocide.
Smashing a bottle of champagne over the PRC's “Genocide Games” would strike at the heart of the rules based system at a threshold moment - a moment when it is in desperate need of preservation. So let's not do it.
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