Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed his concerns about holding the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022 in a media interview Thursday (March 18). He warned that if the games are held in Beijing as planned, foreign athletes and journalists could be at risk of being detained by Communist authorities for their statements. He further explained with examples.
In an interview with the National Review on Thursday, Pompeo specifically warned that Olympic athletes may not be allowed to leave China if they speak out or protest against the genocide of the Communist Party’s Uighur people, according to the Communist Party’s new security law.
“I can’t imagine that athletes anywhere in the world don’t know what’s going on in western China and don’t want to be able to talk about it. However, if they choose to do so inside China today, I think a likely outcome would be that the Chinese Communist Party would deny them permission to leave the country.” Pompeo said, “This is too dangerous and unacceptable. We shouldn’t force athletes to suffer for that choice.”
Pompeo previously commented in an interview with the Washington Examiner and radio host Hugh Hewitt that he wanted the U.S. to boycott the 2022 (Beijing Winter) Olympics. He detailed the reasons for his concerns in an interview with the National Review.
Pompeo warned that if the Olympics do take place in Beijing, athletes and journalists from the U.S. and other countries would risk retaliation from the Chinese Communist Party for speaking out. Last May, the Communist Party passed a National Security Law to crack down on dissidents in Hong Kong, but the law has also been used to crack down on non-Chinese nationals who speak out in Western democracies in ways that displease the Communist Party.
Imagine, Pompeo said, that you (in China) work for the company that broadcasts the game and you see something that you want the world to know about. Imagine the predicament you find yourself in. The moment you clearly say these things on the show, “you will be in violation of their [the Communist Party’s] National Security Law and you will be subject to restrictions that you will not be allowed to leave China.”
He also explained the reasons behind the Trump administration’s decision to characterize the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of the Uighurs as “genocide.
On January 19, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the Trump Administration had found the Chinese Communist authorities guilty of “genocide and Crimes Against Humanity” for their crackdown on Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang region.
In a Feb. 27 interview with Fox, Pompeo said, “If forced sterilization and forced labor, separating families, imprisoning a million people for the purpose of destroying non-Han Chinese, if that’s not genocide, then the world has lost its way.”
In light of the Communist Party’s human rights record, several members of the U.S. Congress and international human rights groups have urged the IOC to move the 2022 Winter Olympics out of Beijing and to select another country instead.
The IOC rejected that call last week. But Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach has claimed they are closely monitoring the human rights situation in China.
Pompeo said Thursday he sent the IOC a set of facts that unmistakably show the Chinese Communist Party should not be rewarded with the noble efforts of Olympic athletes.
“The IOC has a moral responsibility to the world, and that means we simply will not allow a group of leaders to destroy an entire group of people in this way.” He continued.
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