Visitors to Chongli in Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, walk past a billboard advertising the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.
Republican U.S. Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) introduced a resolution Monday (Feb. 15) urging that the United States should boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. “I hope this is the first step for the U.S. government to join the 180 human rights organizations calling for a boycott (of the Beijing Winter Olympics) and to put the United States at the forefront of human rights advocates around the world,” said Rep. Waltz.
According to the content, the resolution first urges the U.S. Olympic Committee to propose to the IOC that the 2022 Winter Olympics be moved to a location outside the People’s Republic of China. If the proposal is rejected by the IOC, “the U.S. Olympic Committee and other national Olympic committees should withdraw from competing in the 2022 Olympic Games.”
The resolution cites the annual report of the Congressional and Executive Commission on China (CECC), which says the Chinese Communist Party took unprecedented steps last year “to expand its repressive policies by censoring, intimidating, and detaining individuals and groups exercising their fundamental human rights, particularly in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and Hong Kong.”
The resolution cites the CCP’s use of mass detentions, forced labor, and increased surveillance to bring China’s religions under tighter official control. At the same Time, the resolution accuses the Communist government of concealing the Communist virus Epidemic by censoring speech, which in turn led to a global outbreak.
The resolution states that “the Olympic Games are a celebration of international Culture, a festival of humanity, and an event designed to set political, ideological and diplomatic differences apart.”
“However, it would be immoral, unethical and wrong to host the 2022 Winter Olympics in China, where organized atrocities continue in Xinjiang; where civil liberties continue to be trampled on in Hong Kong; where people’s fundamental right to participate in religious worship continues to be brutally persecuted; and where a new coronavirus epidemic continues to rage around the world,” the resolution said.
“Rewarding dictators for their egregious behavior only emboldens them, and there is no worse time to reward Xi for his utterly reckless, brutal and inhumane behavior,” Rep. Walz, a Republican federal congressman from Florida, wrote in a media pitch Monday.
Rep. Walz also said the Chinese Communist Party should not enjoy the benefits of the economic benefits and free public publicity that accompany hosting the Olympics. “It’s as if it’s normal behavior to say that the Chinese Communist Party is imprisoning millions of its citizens for their race and religion, or allowing pandemics to break out around the world,” Walz said.
Waltz, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, also mentioned that dictatorships have tried to use hosting the Olympics to legitimize their various tactics and positions in the international community: Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Russia and now the People’s Republic of China.
In his contribution, Waltz cites the example of then-President Jimmy Carter, who pressured the U.S. Olympic Committee to boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow and actively sought international cooperation to boycott the Moscow Olympics in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Because of the boycott and other factors, the number of countries participating in the Games was the lowest since 1956: only 65 countries officially competed, and seven of them were absent from the opening ceremonies despite their participation.
It is worth mentioning that China joined the dozens of countries that boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics and did not participate in the games.
Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who has long been active and has repeatedly and harshly accused the Chinese Communist Party of human rights problems in Xinjiang, also introduced a resolution earlier this month calling on the IOC to move the 2022 Winter Olympics out of China and allow another country to bid “unless Beijing immediately addresses its serious and substantial human rights violations.”
The Senate resolution is currently co-sponsored by six Republican senators.
Last week, President Joe Biden spoke with Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping for the first time since the White House changed hands. A White House statement said, “President Biden highlighted fundamental concerns about Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices, its repression of Hong Kong, its human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and its increasingly assertive behavior in the region, including toward Taiwan.”
Congressman Walz told FoxNews.com that he hopes the Biden Administration will really “look at all of these things,” including the Chinese government’s crackdown on freedom of religion and expression.
In January, before leaving office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo characterized the Chinese Communist government’s crackdown on the Uighurs as genocide. Antony Blinken, the Biden administration’s new secretary of state, had agreed with that designation during his confirmation hearings.
An international coalition of more than 180 human rights groups from around the world issued an open letter Feb. 3 calling on leaders to focus on the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights record and to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics as the countdown to Beijing’s 2022 Winter Games entered its 11th month.
As international calls for attention to China’s human rights issues and a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics grew, the Communist Party’s official media Global Times published an article on February 8 threatening that the Communist Party would respond to countries that boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics with “severe sanctions.
Waltz said he couldn’t imagine the dedication and hard work American athletes have put into this moment in their lives, but “this moment is much more than a sports competition.
“Let’s be clear, this is the last resort. Unfortunately, the IOC has proven that it, like many other international organizations, is corrupted by Chinese Communist Party funds,” Waltz wrote at the end of the article, “I hope this is the first step for the U.S. government to join the 180 human rights organizations calling for a boycott (of the Beijing Winter Olympics) and to put the United States at the forefront of human rights advocates around the world. “
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