Updated: India Announces Boycott Of Beijing Winter Olympics Over China Politicising Event

New Delhi, Feb 3 (UNI) India on Thursday announced a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics a day after China deputed a PLA soldier who was part of the Galwan 2020 clashes as torch bearer at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics torch relay. Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said that India’s Charge D’Affaires at the Beijing Embassy would not be attending the opening or closing ceremony of the Olympics. “We have seen reports on this issue. It is indeed regrettable that the Chinese side has chosen to politicise an event like the Olympics. “I wish to inform that our Charge D ‘Affaires of our embassy in Beijing, will not be attending the opening or the closing ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.”

The state-run Global Times reported that Qi Fabao, a regiment commander, who had sustained a head injury in the fighting in the freezing Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh on June 15-16, 2020, was a torch bearer at the Beijing Olympics on Wednesday. Qi, the regimental commander from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Xinjiang military command, carried the flame from Wang Meng, China’s four-time Olympic short track speed skating champion, at the Winter Olympic Park on Wednesday.

Twenty Indian soldiers, including a commanding officer (CO), were killed in the fierce clash with Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh, in what was the biggest military confrontation in over five decades between the two sides. The Chinese side, after keeping mum over their casualties, revealed after 8 months that four of their soldiers had been killed.