Why I won’t be watching the Beijing Olympics

The flame will be set ablaze today, but I won’t be watching the Winter Olympics from Beijing. I can’t.

Without wanting to in any way sound flippant or trivial, that was no easy choice. I have been a full-on Olympics junkie since the summer of 1976 when, as a 14 year old teenager, I sprawled on the carpet glued to our radio (the family tv was in a moving van heading from Alberta to NB) listening as results came in. I’ve never missed the Games since, summer or winter. And I can’t count the number of times over the years that followed that I was going for Olympic gold for Canada in my own head while out for a long run or speeding down a ski hill.

But I cannot in any conscience tune into the footage from the sealed off Olympic bubble knowing that in other corners of that same country, genocide proceeds against the Uyghurs, repression deepens in Hong Kong, human rights violations against Tibetans and Falun Gong practitioners do not relent, the space for human rights defenders, lawyers, independent journalists and democracy campaigners becomes more perilous, more people are executed yearly than in the rest of the world combined, a Canadian citizen, Huseyin Celil, approaches 16 years of unlawful detention and separation from his family in Burlington, Ontario, the IOC continues its dance of pretending all is fine for Peng Shuai, and so much more.

It was clear long ago that there would not be a boycott of these Olympics or a decision to relocate them elsewhere. That was likely a foregone conclusion back in 2015 when the games were awarded to Beijing in the first place with seeming little consideration for China’s worsening human rights record. But it needn’t have been an all or nothing proposition, where was the concerted human rights ‘game plan’ for these Olympics? Beyond a few world leaders and other dignitaries staying away from the Opening Ceremony, human rights concern let alone any meaningful human rights action is nowhere on display.

I wish each and every passionate and hard-working Canadian athlete the very best. But I won’t be dropping by. I can’t.