KABUL – Zakia and Hossain have made it: they are out of Afghanistan and could fulfill their dream of participating in the Tokyo Paralympics, the Olympics for disabled people who have just started. A dream that seemed to have shattered when the Taliban arrived, just as the two Afghan athletes, Zakia Khudadadi (taekwondo) and Hossain Rasouli (athletics) were about to leave for Japan. →
The calls to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics are growing by the day. A coalition group representing Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kong activists, and many others issued a joint statement in May calling for the complete removal of the Winter Game from Beijing next year. Canada is in a particularly precarious relationship with China. With two Canadian hostages Michael Korvig and Michael Spavor held in prison, Canada so far has had a very tepid response to China’s aggression. The entire cabinet and a few other Liberal MPs along with Prime Minister Trudeau removed themselves from voting for the Uyghur Genocide motion. Perhaps they wanted to send a message of non-provocation to China. But this sort of appeasement has not served Canada well at all in the conundrum of Canada-China relations. →