Australia, Britain and the US will pay a price for their “mistaken acts” after deciding not to send government delegations to February’s Winter Olympics in Beijing, China’s foreign ministry has said. The US was the first to announce a boycott, saying on Monday its government officials would not attend the February Games because of China’s human rights “atrocities”, weeks after talks aimed at easing tension between the world’s two largest economies. “The United States, Britain and Australia have used the Olympics platform for political manipulation,” said Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson…
Tag: Human rights
Winter Olympics top sponsors ‘silent’ over China’s human rights record
Corporate sponsors of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics have been accused of “squandering the opportunity” to pressure China to address its “appalling human rights record”. The Games’ top level sponsors, including Coca-Cola, Airbnb, Procter & Gamble, Intel and Visa, were on Friday accused of ignoring China’s alleged “crimes against humanity against Uyghurs” and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang as well the repression of free speech in Hong Kong. Human Rights Watch (HWR), the New York-based campaign group, said it had written to all 13 of the Olympics top corporate partners…
Chinese effort to gather ‘micro clues’ on Uyghurs laid bare in report
Authorities in the Chinese region of Xinjiang are using predictive policing and human surveillance to gather “micro clues” about Uyghurs and empower neighbourhood informants to ensure compliance at every level of society, according to a report. The research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) thinktank detailed Xinjiang authorities’ expansive use of grassroots committees, integrated with China’s extensive surveillance technology, to police their Uyghur neighbours’ movements – and emotions. The findings shed further light on the extraordinary scope of the Chinese Communist party’s grip on the largely Muslim and purportedly…