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"As a Uyghur living in Germany, I call on you to make sure that the European Union does not endorse China’s genocide against my people in East Turkistan by attending the upcoming winter Olympic Games in Beijing. The EU must take a firm stand on human rights and must refuse to be implicated in China’s sportswashing. The time to act is now!" - Zumretay Arkin, World Uyghur Congress

„Hong Kong has fallen from one of the freest cities in Asia to a de facto police state. That’s why I had to leave my home city, which I always loved because of its freedoms. If I was to return to Hongkong, I would be imprisoned – just because I opposed the Chinese dictatorship. The European Union should not help China to whitewash its crimes. All of the European countries should diplomatically boycott the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.“ – Ray Wong, Hong Kong Democracy Activist

Dear Heads of Government of the European Union,
Dear Foreign Ministers of the European Union,
Dear President of the European Commission,
Dear High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy,

This week, a coalition of over 250 global campaign groups representing Tibetans, Uyghurs, Hongkongers, Chinese, Southern Mongolians, Taiwanese, and other affected and concerned communities addressed you in an Open Letter. We urge all EU leaders to take strong multilateral action by committing to a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics:

"On 9 December an independent tribunal found China was carrying out “a deliberate, systematic and concerted policy” to bring about “long-term reduction of Uyghur and other Turkic people “, and such constituted genocide and crimes against humanity under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

For EU leaders or diplomats to attend the Beijing 2022 Winter Games in the knowledge that the host state is enacting a genocide would be an act of complicity and an enabling of China’s plan to ‘sport wash’ their human rights abuses.

Further to the active genocide against the Uyghur people, new evidence released this week shows that close to 1-million Tibetan children are being housed by Chinese authorities in colonial boarding schools, cut off from their parents, families, culture, and religion, and faced with intense political indoctrination. In Hong Kong, three more democracy activists have been found ‘guilty’ for taking part in a vigil to mark the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre and have been sentenced to up to 14-months in jail simply for taking part in a peaceful protest.

There is no prospect of the Beijing 2022 Winter Games playing a positive role for human rights or encouraging the Chinese government to halt the above human rights violations. As the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics showed, the Chinese government will instead interpret the lack of action by governments and the presence of leaders and dignitaries at the opening and closing ceremonies as a message that it risks no serious consequences for its actions.

Governments must now prove that there is the political will to stand up against China’s despicable human rights abuses and crimes against humanity. In this last week we have seen the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia all make commitments to boycott Beijing 2022, and it is now time for every government around to stand on the right side of history. The Chinese government is aware that the EU is in a uniquely powerful position due to its ability to act as a bloc to stand for human rights. A joint boycott by EU countries has the potential to be the strongest statement yet by governments who care about defending human rights."

I agree with the coalition call and urgently call on EU leaders to commit to a joint multilateral diplomatic boycott of Beijing 2022, due to the disastrous human rights situation in Tibet, East Turkestan, Hong Kong and China.