Why Did the West Boycott the Beijing Olympics While the Arabs Participated?

Before the Beijing Winter Olympics on February 20, 2022, Western countries announced a “diplomatic boycott” of the Games, led by the United States, Australia, Canada, Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark.

The reason was to protest China's human rights record, persecution of ethnic minorities such as Muslim Uighurs, Chinese threats to invade Taiwan, and suppression of the democratic movement in Hong Kong.

On the other hand, the majority of Arab and Islamic countries participated despite China's repression of Muslims, due to its economic and political interests with Beijing, which prompted several countries such as Egypt, Morocco and Gulf countries to hand over persecuted Muslims fleeing from China to its government.

At the forefront of the Arab and Islamic presence were the President of the Egyptian regime, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Emirates’ ruler, Mohammed bin Zayed, and Princess Reema bint Bandar Al Saud, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington.

This was an indication of tense relations with the administration of Joe Biden, that completely withheld 10 percent of military aid to Egypt, and refused to provide Abu Dhabi with F-35 strategic aircraft and has not yet communicated with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

This is not the first time that a sports tournament has turned to mark political positions and put diplomatic pressure between parties having tense relations.

The East and West had previously exchanged boycotts of the Olympic Games in previous years and “politicized sports,” after it became a great opportunity to settle scores between countries.

 

The Politicization of the Olympics

Concern for human rights has turned into an almost constant policy in sports in recent years, but the boycott has taken other forms to protest the policies of the occupation, as demonstrated by the individual Arab boycott of Israeli athletes in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

“China knew that it could not escape politics at the opening ceremony of the Olympics, so it did not try to hide the relationship of politics with sports,” according to a report by the TIME, on February 4, 2022.

Despite its call for the separation of politics and sports, and that the Olympics should not be used to "manipulate political situations", after America and its allies announced a diplomatic boycott, Beijing, itself, joined the game.

The opening ceremony began when it sought to respond to criticism regarding Muslim Uighurs and minorities, by showing representatives of all 56 officially recognized ethnic groups, including the Uighurs, standing together in harmony, bearing the Chinese flag.

At the opening ceremony, the Chinese president tried to show that the Muslim Uighurs do not suffer any discrimination, so he chose a young woman from Xinjiang (East Turkestan), to carry the Chinese Olympic torch.

The Wall Street Journal said it is a Chinese attempt to whitewash its image in the face of the global pressure campaign against the persecution of the Uyghurs, and the young Muslim woman disappeared after the opening and did not appear.

As part of mixing sports with politics, American channel, NBC, made a bold broadcast from Beijing Stadium on February 5, by hosting experts to talk about Chinese human rights violations, especially Uyghur Muslims, and received praise for that.

Beijing's hosting of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his support for his position against the West, came as a clearer indication of the "politicization" of the Olympics, to which was added Beijing's call for the West to "abandon the ideological approach of the Cold War in dealing with the Ukraine crisis," according to TIME.

 

Boycott Controversy

The move by Western governments not to attend their official representatives, without preventing athletes from competing across an entire boycott, was like a "reprimand to China" over the human rights file, according to the BBC sports editor, December 13, 2021.

It is not a new tactic. Three years ago, in March 2018, some European countries announced their diplomatic boycott of the World Cup soccer tournament in Russia, in protest of Moscow's poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Salisbury Novichok.

However, the call for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics was welcomed by many rights groups from Tibet, Uyghurs, South Mongolia, Hong Kong and Taiwan, forming a campaign called “No Beijing.”

These groups asked: If a full boycott is not appropriate now, in a country accused of genocide, so when?

They stressed that refusing to participate in the Olympics increases awareness of the violations committed by China.

They said with the hashtag #NoBeijing2022 that the sporting boycotts of the apartheid regime in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s played a crucial role in putting pressure on Pretoria's rulers and ending their authority.

But voices opposing the boycott were considered useless, as the cold boycott of the games in 1980 and 1984 had little political impact, and only the athletes who boycotted were ultimately punished.

They proved that the boycott of the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, the 2014 Winter Olympics, and then the World Cup in Russia 2018, did not bring conclusive results and human rights violations continue.

These voices were supported by The Washington Post in a report on February 3, 2022, when the newspaper spoke about the impact of this year's boycott on China, referring to what it called “the failed boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.”

It stated that the boycott calls failed in 2008, although the Chinese state's repression of the Muslim Uighurs had not been revealed at the time, despite the signing of more than 100 US lawmakers on an official request to boycott, including Barack Obama, before he became president.

Opponents of the boycott also believe that the West's use of politics in sports has colonial goals related to achieving their interests, not victory for principles.

They pointed out that there are violations in the West against Muslim minorities, France's persecution of its Muslims and the closure of their mosques and schools, and against black citizens in America, despite that, sports were not boycotted in these countries.

 

Beijing and Moscow Alliance

In return for the West's politicization of the Beijing session, and its embarrassment by not sending official delegations, China sought to turn it into an occasion for the birth of a new alliance with Moscow, in a move aimed at responding to the two giants of the East to the Western alliance against them in Ukraine, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Behind the Games, a meeting between the Russian and Chinese presidents in Beijing revealed a new alliance making the strongest strategic partnership between them, which resulted in deals with Russian oil and gas companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin signed on February 4, 2022, two new agreements in the oil and gas sector worth $117.5 billion, which seemed like a slap from Putin to the West, at a time when European importers threatened to boycott Russia's gas because of Ukraine.

The meeting was not without another political message, when the two presidents denounced, in a joint declaration, the "negative impact" of the United States' influence on "stability and peace" in the world.

These exchanged political messages, and the politicization of the Olympic Games, prompted United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to declare his support for an Olympics without politics.

“With so many conflicts raging around the world, at this moment more than ever we need the message of unity and solidarity that is the message of the Olympic Games,” he said on February 5, 2022.

 

History of Politicization

Since its appearance in 1896, the Olympic Games have represented a means of pressure and protest that many countries have resorted to, to express their anger and protest against political decisions.

Perhaps this is why, in January 2020, the International Olympic Committee approved the “No Politics in the Olympic Games” rule, in new guidelines that prohibit athletes from demonstrating politically, religiously, or racially during the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

However, due to political and ideological conflicts, the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics did not escape “politicization” despite the International Olympic Committee's assertion that there is no politics in sports.

This led to the transformation of sports and the Olympics into a vast arena for settling accounts between countries whose relations are marred by political, military or economic tensions, although their goal, since their inception, has been to unite peoples and renounce wars and fanaticism.

The first political protest was recorded at the 1906 Olympics, when Irish high jumper Peter O'Connor climbed a flagpole nearly 6 meters long during the medal ceremony, to raise a flag bearing the words Erin Go Bragh, meaning “Ireland till the end of time.”

The second was in 1956, when eight countries were absent from the session, and Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and Cambodia boycotted the session in protest of the tripartite aggression that targeted Cairo, as well as the Soviet Union's invasion of Hungary in the same year.

At the 1968 Mexico Olympics, American runners Tommy Smith and John Carlos raised a political banner highlighting the racial inequality of blacks, while standing on the podium to receive the gold and bronze medals.

In the 1980 Moscow Games, 66 countries from the West and the Islamic world boycotted the Games in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Russians and their allies, 14 countries from the eastern camp, responded by boycotting the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

In the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Arab players boycotted their Israeli counterparts because of normalization.

Prior to this, the United States and Britain threatened to withdraw from the Berlin Games in 1936 in protest against Nazi rule, and to cancel the Olympic Games in 1916, 1940 and 1944 due to the world wars.

Both Germany and Japan were expelled from the 1948 games for their roles in World War II, and South Africa's participation was excluded for years due to the policy of apartheid.