Olympics
Australia joins diplomatic boycott of Beijing Winter Games
Australia will join the United States in a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Wednesday, as other allies weighed similar moves to protest China’s human rights record.
The United States has said its government officials will boycott February’s Beijing Olympics because of China’s human rights “atrocities”, just weeks after talks aimed at easing tense relations between the world’s two largest economies.
China said the United States would “pay the price” for its decision and warned of countermeasures in response, but gave no details.
Morrison said Wednesday’s decision came because of Australia’s struggles to re-open diplomatic channels with China to discuss alleged human rights abuses in the far western region of Xinjiang and Beijing’s moves against Australian imports.
Announcing the plans, Morrison said Beijing had not responded to several issues raised by Canberra, including the rights abuse accusations.
“So it is not surprising therefore that Australian government officials would not be going to China for those Games,” Morrison told reporters in Sydney. Australian athletes will attend.
China has denied any wrongdoing in Xinjiang and said allegations are fabricated.
Its foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a daily briefing in Beijing that Australian politicians were engaged in “political posturing”.
“Whether they come or not, nobody cares,” he added.
The Australian Olympic Committee said the boycott would have no impact on athletes’ preparations for the Games, which run from Feb. 4 to 20, adding that “diplomatic options” were a matter for governments.
Other U.S. allies have been slow to commit to joining the boycott.
Britain is considering approving limited government attendance at the event in the Chinese capital that would stop short of a full diplomatic boycott, the Telegraph newspaper said on Wednesday.
An outright ban on ministerial and diplomatic representation at the Winter Games remains a possibility, it added.
Japan is considering not sending cabinet members to Games after the United States announced its diplomatic boycott, the Sankei Shimbun daily said on Wednesday, citing unidentified government sources.
A South Korean presidential official said the country is currently not considering a diplomatic boycott.
President Joe Biden’s administration cited what the United States calls genocide against minority Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region. China denies all rights abuses.
The Winter Games will begin about six months after the Summer Games wrapped up in the Japanese capital of Tokyo following a year’s delay because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We always ask for as much respect as possible and least possible interference from the political world,” said Juan Antonio Samaranch, who heads the International Olympic Committee’s coordination panel for the Beijing event.
“We have to be reciprocal. We respect the political decisions taken by political bodies.”
The United States is set to host the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and is preparing to bid for the 2030 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
The American diplomatic boycott, encouraged for months by some members of the U.S. Congress and rights groups, comes despite an effort to stabilise the two nations’ ties, with a video meeting last month between Biden and China’s Xi Jinping.
‘THE ONLY OPTION’
Unless other countries joined the boycott it would undermine the message that China’s human rights abuses are unacceptable, said Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
“The only option really that is available to us is to try to get as many countries as we can to stand with us in this coalition,” Glaser told a U.S. congressional hearing on Tuesday.
Ties between Australia and its top trade partner, China, are at a low ebb after Canberra banned Huawei Technologies from its 5G broadband network in 2018 and sought an independent inquiry into the origins of COVID-19.
Beijing responded with tariffs on Australian commodities such as barley, beef, coal and wine.
-Reuters
Paris 2024 sold a record 12 million tickets for the Olympics and Paralympics, beating the Games record previously set by London 2012, organisers said on Sunday.
Some 9.5 million tickets were sold for the Olympics and 2.5 million for the Paralympics, which end on Sunday.
In 2012, London organisers set the record for the Paralympics with 2.7 million tickets sold but only 8.2 million were sold for the Olympics.
-Reuters
The French capital will pay tribute to Ugandan Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei, who was set on fire by her boyfriend, by naming a sports facility in her honour, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced on Friday.
The marathon runner, who competed in the Paris Games last month died on Thursday, four days after she was doused in petrol and ignited by her boyfriend in Kenya, in the latest attack on a female athlete in the country.
The 33-year-old, who finished 44th in her Olympic Games debut, suffered burns to more than 75% of her body in Sunday’s attack, Kenyan and Ugandan media reported.
“She dazzled us here in Paris. We saw her. Her beauty, her strength, her freedom, and it was in all likelihood her beauty, strength and freedom which were intolerable for the person who committed this murder,” Hidalgo told reporters.
“Paris will not forget her. We’ll dedicate a sports venue to her so that her memory and her story remains among us and helps carry the message of equality, which is a message carried by the Olympic and Paralympic Games.”
Cheptegei is the third prominent sportswoman to be killed in Kenya since October 2021. Kenyan Sports Minister Kipchumba Murkomen described Cheptegei’s death as a loss “to the entire region”.
“This is a critical moment— not just to mourn the loss of a remarkable Olympian, but to commit ourselves to creating a society that respects and protects the dignity of every individual,” Uganda’s Athletes commission Chair Ganzi Semu Mugula said on Friday.
-Reuters
Engineer’s descendants say French capital landmark ‘not intended as advertising platform’
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has triggered a heated debate by saying she wants to keep the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower after the summer Games are over.
“The decision is up to me, and I have the agreement of the IOC [International Olympic Committee],” she told the Ouest-France newspaper over the weekend.
“So yes, they [the rings] will stay on the Eiffel Tower,” she added.
Some Parisians backed the move, but others – including heritage campaigners – said it was a bad idea and would “defile” the French capital’s iconic monument.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has triggered a heated debate by saying she wants to keep the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower after the summer Games are over.
“The decision is up to me, and I have the agreement of the IOC [International Olympic Committee],” she told the Ouest-France newspaper over the weekend.
“So yes, they [the rings] will stay on the Eiffel Tower,” she added.
Some Parisians backed the move, but others – including heritage campaigners – said it was a bad idea and would “defile” the French capital’s iconic monument.
The five rings – 29m (95ft) wide, 15m high and weighing 30 tonnes – were installed on the Eiffel Tower before the Paris Olympics opened on 26 July, and were expected to be taken down after the Paralympics’ closing ceremony on 8 September.
But Ms Hidalgo said she wanted to keep the interlaced rings of blue, yellow, black, green and red, symbolising the five continents.
She added that the current rings – each one measuring 9m in diameter – were too heavy and would be replaced by a lighter version at some point.
The Socialist mayor also claimed that “the French have fallen in love with Paris again” during the Games, and she wanted “this festive spirit to remain”.
Some Parisians as well as visitors to the French capital supported the mayor.
“The Eiffel Tower is very beautiful, the rings add colour. It’s very nice to see it like this,” a young woman, who identified herself as Solène, told the France Bleu website.
But Manon, a local resident, said this was “a really bad idea”.
“It’s a historic monument, why defile it with rings? It was good for the Olympics but now it’s over, we can move on, maybe we should remove them and return the Eiffel Tower to how it was before,” he told France Bleu.
Social media user Christophe Robin said Ms Hidalgo should have consulted Parisians before going ahead with her plan.
In a post on X, he reminded that the Eiffel Tower featured a Citroën advert in 1925-36.
The Eiffel Tower was built in1889 for the World’s Fair. The wrought-iron lattice tower was initially heavily criticised by Parisian artists and intellectuals – but is now seen by many as the symbol of the “City of Light”.
Ms Hidalgo, who has been running Paris since 2014, is known for her bold – and sometimes controversial – reforms.
Under her tenure, many city streets, including the banks of the river Seine, have been pedestrianised.
Last year, she won convincingly a city referendum to ban rental electric scooters. However, fewer than 8% of those eligible turned out to vote.
But both drivers’ groups and opposition figures attacked the scheme, saying the SUV classification was misleading as many family-size cars would be affected.
France’s Environment Minister Christophe Béchu said at the time that the surcharge amounted to “punitive environmentalism”.
And just before the Paris Olympics, Ms Hidalgo and other officials went into the Seine to prove the river was safe to swim.
-BBC
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