photo credit: Yonhap News
French President Emmanuel Macron said on the 9th local time that he would not participate in the ‘diplomatic boycott’ of the Beijing Winter Olympics promoted by the United States, raising questions about the effectiveness.
“No one is saying they won’t send any sports players,” Macron said at a press conference on the afternoon of the same day.
“We should not politicize the theme of the Olympics in order to take very small, symbolic measures,” he said.
Ahead of Macron’s meeting, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanque appeared on BFM and announced that France’s sports minister Roxana Maracineano would attend the Beijing Olympics.
Although human rights violations in China deserve to be condemned, Blanque said, “Sports is a world that has meaning in its own right, so we need to protect it from political interference.”
.
