Beijing is still counting down cheerfully
More and more Western organizations are supporting the political calls for a boycott of the Olympic Winter Games 2022 in Beijing under hashtags such as “#Boycott Beijing 2022” or “#No Rights No Games”. The reasons given are the handling of human rights in Xinjiang and Tibet, as well as the repression against the protest movement in Hong Kong and the imprisonment of political dissidents.
Boycotts of the Olympic Games are nothing new. However, the winter games have so far been spared. This has primarily to do with the greater attention paid to the Summer Games. While there was a boycott movement against the Summer Olympics in Berlin in 1936, the Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen that same year went without much fuss.
The boycott of the games in Berlin, led by Jewish organizations, was not a great success. Some Jewish athletes stayed away from the event, and the Spanish Republic planned a “People’s Olympiad” in Barcelona as a counter-event. However, this did not happen because the day before the opening ceremony, Franco’s troops started their offensive. Quite a few of the workers’ athletes who were there went to the front to defend the republic.
There were also boycott efforts before the Summer Olympics in Mexico City in 1968. Organizations like the “Olympic Project for Human Rights” turned against structural racism in the sports world, not least in the International Olympic Committee. Then there was the tense situation in Mexico itself. Ten days before the opening of the Games, 300 people were killed by the security forces during social protests in the Tlatelolco district. In this case, too, there was no widespread boycott of the games, although some prominent athletes, such as basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, refused to appear. Others used the games for protests. Including Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who created an iconic image of sports history with their black power greeting at the award ceremony of the 200-meter run.
Widespread boycotts only came about when the initiative came from governments. This was the case for the first time in 1976 in Montreal. Numerous African countries refused to participate as New Zealand was not excluded from the games, despite the fact that the country had hosted the South African rugby team a few months earlier. In the eyes of the critics, this violated the international boycott of the apartheid regime.
In 1980, numerous Western states under the leadership of the USA did not take part in the Summer Olympics in Moscow. The reason given was the Soviet military engagement in Afghanistan. Four years later, the Soviet Union and 13 allied states decided not to participate in the Summer Games in Los Angeles. They did not see the safety of their athletes guaranteed. In 1988, North Korea refused to take part in the Summer Games in Seoul after Pyongyang was not included in the organization of the Games. That did not have any major consequences. Only Cuba joined the boycott.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, there was no longer any boycott worth mentioning against the Olympic Games. Protest movements are regularly formed, but these are primarily directed against the commercialization of the games. The protests of indigenous groups against the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver 2010 did not lead to boycott discussions either.
Given the geopolitical situation, it is not surprising that these are now in connection with the games in China. The China policy of the new US President Joseph Biden has not yet taken on clear forms. Various forces are trying to distinguish themselves from all political camps. Both the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi of the Democratic Party, and the former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney spoke out in favor of a “diplomatic boycott” whose meaning is not immediately apparent: athletes should go, others shouldn’t. In any case, Joseph Biden waves it away. A boycott is currently not being discussed, the White House has been saying for months.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is now withdrawing to the well-known position that sport has nothing to do with politics. One was »not a world government«, declared the German IOC President Thomas Bach shortly after his re-election in March of this year.
Will the Beijing Games be boycotted? Barely. For this, a lot would have to happen in global politics in the next few months. The economic interests in participating are far too great for everyone. That cannot be compensated for with political gains. And would this even exist? Boycotts of major sporting events are symbolic gestures. You have a certain charisma. However, they do not do justice to the complexity of political situations.
