The Chinese persecution of the Uyghurs makes it clear that “Never Again” must not be only words

Are we missing our opportunity to turn "Never Again" from words to actions?

Two weeks ago, #NeverAgain trended on social media, just as it does every year on January 27 in recognition of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Then, just over a week later, on Friday, February 4, the world was expected to tune in to watch the Opening Ceremony of the 2022 winter Olympics in Beijing. The cognitive dissonance of this is hard to reconcile. 

Since 2015, the world has been aware that the Chinese government has been in the process of committing deliberate and intentional genocide by forced sterilization of the Uyghur population. To date, some one million of a potential 10 million Chinese Uyghur Muslims are being held in concentration camps. To understand the long-term implications of this, in the 77 years since the Holocaust, the Jewish population is yet to have recovered from the largest systematic extermination attempt in history - with only 15 million Jews today compared to the 16.5 million in 1939. How can we look ourselves in the eye when we say “Never Again” while turning a blind eye to what is happening in China? 

As a Jewish person whose family came to Canada to escape Nazi persecution, I have always asked myself: how did the world look away from what was happening? How did everyone just sit back while six million Jews were sent to concentration camps? But today, in a world with more access to information than was imaginable in 1945, we are once again doing exactly that. 

While Canada, the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom are engaged in a symbolic diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics, the athletes from those countries are still competing and reporters from around the world have travelled to China to provide coverage, not of the human rights atrocity taking place, but of the hockey game happening next door. 

And, what about the athletes? 

Elite athletics is, for many, a time-limited endeavour. If they don’t compete in the Olympics right now - even an Olympics compromised by Covid - they may no longer be at the level to try again when the next one rolls around. Athletes have no agency in determining the location of the Olympic Games at which they will compete, and asking them to travel to a country that is in the midst of committing a human rights atrocity places them in an intense and unfair moral bind.  But this reality simply does not justify the failure of International governments to enact a total boycott, and absolutely does not excuse the lack of widespread public protest, and especially does not absolve the IOC from having selected Beijing to host the 2022 Winter Olympics back in 2015. 

The IOC is aware of the human rights issues associated with China hosting these Olympic Games, evidenced by the IOC handing out new SIM cards to all athletes upon arrival in Beijing over cybersecurity concerns. Team Canada and Team USA, among others, have sent out messaging encouraging the use of burner phones and laptops while in China. Athletes have additionally been cautioned by various National Olympic Committees against accepting, activating, and importing technology provided to them by the Chinese government during the Games. Despite demonstrating a clear concern around the activities of the Chinese government and the safety of athletes, the IOC continues to enforce Rule 50 of the 1975 Olympic Charter preventing athletes from staging political protests in the stadium and requiring they abide by the law of the country where the games are being held. In the case of China, this means being restricted from commenting on the human rights abuses in Tibet and against the Uyghur population. In response to the difficult position this places athletes in, human rights organizations have cautioned athletes against taking photographs with Chinese officials. 

It is not only the IOC who should have been concerned about the actions of the Chinese government leading up to these games. Countries continued to send their athletes amidst a lack of public outcry demanding the contrary. That only a minority of athletes refused to attend the Beijing Olympics, though some had planned to boycott the Opening Ceremony, is understandable after working their entire lives to compete at the highest possible level. 

The idea of “Never Again” as it pertains to the memory of the Holocaust is that having witnessed the mass murder of one-third of the world’s Jewish population, we, the international community will not tolerate something like this happening ever again. But when faced with the opportunity to actually act on “Never Again”, the world has behaved like reluctant parents not wanting to tell their children they can’t play at a particular playground because it compromises their safety and morality. 

We have been failing for the past seven years to hold China accountable for its persecution of the Uyghur population. With the eyes of the world on Beijing for the next three weeks, we no longer have an excuse. If “Never Again” is more than words or a hashtag, it’s time to act on it, by calling on our governments and the IOC to take swift and definitive action to stop the ongoing Uyghur genocide.