Calls for boycott of 2022 Beijing Olympics to grow louder: Report

With the opening ceremony of 2022 Winter Beijing Olympics drawing near, calls for the boycott of the games are expected to grow louder amid the Chinese ongoing repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Human rights experts and lawmakers of several countries are calling for the boycott of the Beijing Olympics. Protests and demonstrations have been taking place around the world in this regard.

There has been much discussion of the possibility of a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics, due to be hosted in Beijing in February, EU Today reported.

During a recent conference in Brussels, where delegates debated the issue of forced organ harvesting, former vice-President of the European Parliament, Edward McMillan-Scott called for a boycott of the games.

Forced organ harvesting, a dehumanising practise which has seen as many as 10,000 people die so their organs can be sold on the open market, or given to ailing Communist Party officials, does not constitute Genocide as defined by the United Nations in 1948, but it does target specific groups, including practitioners of Falun Gong.

Edward McMillan-Scott noted that the China Tribunal, represented at the conference by London-based human rights lawyer Hamid Sabi, Counsel to the Tribunal, considered China's actions in this respect as coming very "close to Genocide."

"The most senior individual in China, Xi Jinping, must have ordered the persecution of the Uyghur population, which includes organ harvesting, and that chain of command is very important in determining Genocide. We hope that in December we will have a finding that is critical for world public opinion in placing the responsibility directly with the Chinese leadership,"

In May, a coalition of human rights groups has called for a complete boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, saying that participating in the games would be tantamount to endorsing China's genocide against the Uyghur people". A coalition, representing Uyghurs, Tibetans, residents of Hong Kong and others, issued a joint statement in May calling for the boycott.

It said that the Chinese government is committing genocide against the Uyghur people and waging an unprecedented campaign of repression in East Turkistan, Tibet and Southern Mongolia, as well as an all-out assault on democracy in Hong Kong.

China has been rebuked globally for crackdown on Uyghur Muslims by sending them to mass detention camps, interfering in their religious activities and sending members of the community to undergo some form of forcible re-education or indoctrination.

Early this year, the United States become the first country in the world to declare the Chinese actions in Xinjiang as "genocide".

In February, both the Canadian and Dutch parliaments adopted motions recognising the Uyghur crisis as genocide. The latter became the first parliament in Europe to do so.

In April, the United Kingdom also declared China's ongoing crackdown in Xinjiang a "genocide".

( With inputs from ANI )

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