Ineffectual boycotts: the Beijing Winter Olympics

The ensuing boycott by some 20 African and Arab states of the Montreal games, which also featured the withdrawal of athletes, caused quite a stir. It troubled the UN Secretary General at the time, Kurt Waldheim, who wished "to point out that the Olympic Games have become an occasion of special significance in mankind's search for brotherhood and understanding."

Fancifully, the Commonwealth Secretary General Shridath Ramphal went so far as to arguethat participating in the games, not withdrawing from them, would aid the "propitious resolution of wider questions".

By not participating, the countries in question helped spur one particularly propitious resolution: the signing of the 1977 Gleneagles Agreement between Commonwealth States. In reaching the agreement, the signatory members agreed to "combat the evil of apartheid by withholding any form of support for, and by taking every practical step to discourage contact or competition by their nationals with sporting organisations, teams or sportsmen from South Africa or any other country where sports are organised on the basis of race, colour or ethnic origin." Isolated, apartheid South Africa began facing searching domestic questions about the future of that political system.

An event free of wine guzzling and canapé gobbling dignitaries is something to cheer but leaving the sporting figures out of a "sporting boycott" is a proposition that remains pointless and absurd. The point was not missed by the authoritarian IOC president Thomas Bach. "The presence of government officials is a political decision for each government so the principle of IOC neutrality applies."

At Beijing, sporting participants will be able to avoid the Carter experiment of 1980 and the babble about human rights and the liberty of the subject. Expect a few, however, to take the knee, though not for the Uighurs. In the meantime, the policies of the PRC will remain unchanged.