2022 Winter Olympics in China: RSF and NGO coalition urge for increased diplomatic boycott

In a joint statement published on 27th January 2022, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and a coalition of 242 human rights NGOs urged more governments to join a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, which will open in China on 4th February, as a way to protest against the regime’s massive violations, including the persecution of journalists. 

“The international community cannot ignore president Xi Jinping’s disastrous human rights records and must not allow him to instrumentalise the Olympic Games to cover up his crimes” says RSF East Asia Bureau head Cédric Alviani, who calls on more governments to “join the diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics to show their disapproval of the Chinese regime’s authoritarian methods and signal their support to the 129 journalists and press freedom defenders it currently detains.”

To date, several governments, including Australia, Canada, Japan, Lithuania, the United Kingdom, and the United States, have announced a diplomatic boycott of the Games in response to the Chinese government’s human rights abuses and will therefore send no senior officials to the opening or closing ceremonies. 

RSF has recently published an unprecedented investigative report entitled ‘The Great Leap Backwards of Journalism in China’, which reveals the previously unheard-of campaign of repression led by Beijing against journalism and the right to information worldwide.

China ranks 177th out of 180 in the RSF World Press Freedom Index, just two places above North Korea, a country in which journalism is synonymous with state propaganda.

Read the letter in attachment: