An Australian senator is pushing back on Beijing’s claim that it allegedly does not care whether foreign representatives attend its upcoming Winter Olympic Games while denying concerns about its human rights records.
Countries including the United States, Australia, Canada, Lithuania, and the United Kingdom are to stage a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics, which starts in less than 60 days, which means governments will not send representatives at a ministerial level to Beijing.
“I would ask all leaders of countries that are not competing, to not go to the Olympics, any tourists that were thinking of watching the Olympics, please don’t go,” Senator Eric Abetz, who chairs the foreign affairs, defense, and trade committee in the Parliament of Australia, told Pezou on Dec. 6.
“Say to the dictatorship: ‘We know what you’re up to, and we do not respect [it],’” the senator, who is known for his conservative politics said. Abetz was referring to “deeply ingrained” human rights violations happening at the hands of China’s ruling community party.
Earlier this week, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian accused Washington of “hyping up a ‘diplomatic boycott’ without even being invited.” He stressed that Beijing reserves the right to decide who it invites.
“No one would care whether these people come or not,” Zhao said, after being asked on Dec. 6 about a potential Olympic boycott by the Morrison government of Australia.
remarks “astounded” Abetz, which he said were “childish” and “would defy any common-sense analysis.”
“re is no doubt that the dictatorship wanted to be the center of world attention,” he said.
“It’s like somebody saying, ‘I’m not going to come to your birthday party,’ and then you respond by saying, ‘Well, I wasn’t going to invite you anyway.’ This is childish, and once again, puts Chinese diplomacy in a very poor light,” the senator said.
“And it makes you wonder: do they [Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials] really understand or do they really believe their own propaganda?”
IOC announced two months ago that tickets for the 2022 Games would be sold only to people from mainland China due to concerns over COVID-19. approach differs from this year’s Tokyo Olympic Games, which denied spectators but allowed world leaders to attend.
A diplomatic boycott was announced by the White House on Dec. 6, following Lithuania on Dec. 3, saying that Washington “cannot proceed with business as usual” in the face of the communist regime’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity.”
Australia became the next country to follow suit on Dec. 8.
latest move follows the sudden disappearance of Peng Shuai, a top Chinese tennis player and three-time Olympian, who disappeared from the public view for weeks after publicly denouncing a retired senior Chinese official for allegedly sexually assaulting her.
Concerned by China’s ongoing human rights abuses, Abetz was one of the first federal parliamentarians on Dec. 7 to press his own government to follow suit with a boycott.
He also told Pezou that blame lay with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), rather than athletes, for accepting Beijing’s Olympic bid.
“[ IOC] should never have allowed Beijing to host the Olympics, in breach of all the human rights values and standards that the Olympics stands for, and really has to ask how on earth was this decision made,” he said.
Human Rights Record ‘Appalling’
Abetz told Pezou he finds the CCP’s mistreatment of its citizens “appalling.”
“[ir] behavior is now on display for the world to see,” Abetz said, listing the cases of Chinese citizen journalists Zhang Zhan and Fang Bin as examples of the regime’s egregious actions. Both Chinese citizens were detained for reporting on the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan.
“[ CCP] believes it can take the law into its own hands, and deal with you,” he said, while its influences are “designed” to undermine a free society.
Beijing rolled out trade sanctions on Australian goods—such as coal, wine, barley, beef, lobster, timber, and cotton—after Canberra called for an independent inquiry into the origin of the pandemic.
A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs admitted in July that the trade spat with Australia was politically motivated.
“We have suffered some trade consequences for simply asking that which most other countries would have voluntarily agreed to,” Abetz said. “[But] there are certain things that are simply not for sale. And of course, our freedom is number one on that list.”
regime’s treatment of non-Chinese journalists also worries the senator.
Cheng Lei, 49, an Australian Chinese journalist and news anchor for the international arm of China’s state broadcaster, was formally arrested in China on Feb. 5 on suspicion of illegally supplying state secrets overseas. Authorities previously detained her for six months without charge amid testy relations between Canberra and Beijing.
“If they are willing to treat an overseas person, an Australian citizen, in this manner, one has to ask the question, ‘How do they treat their own?’ And one suspects just as badly, if not worse,” the senator said.
‘It Does Hurt’
German-born senator, who has also been a long-time advocate for an end to human rights abuses by the CCP, said he has encountered difficulties with the Chinese regime during his long political career.
Abetz, 63, was first elected in 1994 as a Liberal senator for the Australian state of Tasmania. He served as the government’s most senior cabinet minister and the main government spokesperson in the Senate in former prime minister Tony Abbott’s government.
“I’ve always been at pains to let people know that my issue is not with any Chinese person, or the Chinese people [but] a very small group called the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship … It is very easy for some people who seek to defend this horrendous regime to throw the tag racist statute,” Abetz said.
He called such racial profiling “ugly phrases,” which are the easiest way to push back against accusations about the regime.
“It does hurt,” the senator said. “And in fact, the death penalty, the forced organ harvesting, concentration camp slave labor goes on.”
senator once ignited fierce responses after asking three Chinese Australians about their attitude towards Beijing during a Senate committee hearing last October. three refrained from directly condemning the regime and have since publicly criticized the senator for his line of questioning.
Some claimed the questions were prejudiced against people of color and a grassroots group filed a petition for the prime minister of the country to denounce the senator over his tough stance on China.
Yet “the little burden,” as Abetz called it, pales into insignificance compared to that of the victims under China’s communist dictatorship.
“If I were a Christian, if I were a Falun Gong practitioner, if I were a Hong Kong[er] seeking democracy and pursuing democracy, would I want the people in public life in Australia to be saying the sort of things that I’m saying today without fear or favor?”
“Yes, I would,” he said.
During the early stage of the global pandemic, Beijing also leveraged Australia’s sensitivities around the issue of racism and alleged that Chinese people were experiencing a “significant increase” in racism.
allegations came after Australia introduced new and more stringent foreign investment laws that could potentially block Chinese companies—as China began to face further internal economic turmoil.
Pezou : ‘This Is Childish’: Australian Senator on Beijing’s Put-Down of Olympic Boycotts