72% of British public say no to Beijing Olympic Games boycott
Sachin Nakrani
Friday February 22, 2008
The Guardian
Beijing
The 2008 Olympics take place in Beijing this August. Photograph: Guang Niu/Getty Images
A large majority of the British public believe it would be wrong for sportsmen and women from this country to boycott the Beijing Olympics despite China's human rights record and links to Sudan, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today. Of the 1,003 people surveyed, 72% agreed the Great Britain team should attend this summer's Games; only 19% said there should be a boycott. The remaining 9% expressed no opinion.
Calls for competitors to stay away from the event were first made after Beijing was awarded the Olympics in 2001 and gained prominence when Steven Spielberg announced last week that he was giving up his post as the Games' artistic director in protest to China's diplomatic and economic backing of the Sudanese government, which has overseen the conflict in the country's Darfur region which has killed more than 200,000 people in the past five years.
