Australia joins US in diplomatic boycott of Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics

News Desk :

Australia will join the United States in a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Wednesday.

Morrison said while Australian athletes will still attend the Games in February, the government will be keeping official representatives at home.

Speaking at a news conference in Sydney, the Australian leader said "human rights abuses and issues in Xinjiang" were some of the concerns raised by the Australian government with Beijing.

"I am very happy to talk to the Chinese government about these issues, and there has been no obstacle to that occurring on our side but the Chinese government has consistently not taken those opportunities to meet with us about those issues," he said.

For months, activists have called for a boycott of the Games over human rights abuses by the Chinese government in Xinjiang and Tibet and its political crackdown in Hong Kong.
Protesters hold up placards and banners as they attend a demonstration in Sydney on June 23, 2021 to call on the Australian government to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics over China's human rights record.

Beijing has been accused by the US and other Western nations of imprisoning more than a million Muslim-majority Uyghurs in detention centers in Xinjiang, where some former detainees claim they were tortured, raped or forcibly sterilized.

Beijing denies the allegations, saying the camps are reeducation centers designed to fight separatism and Islamist terrorism in the far western region.