Two non-governmental and non-profit organizations have launched a joint open letter urging the U.S. Olympic Committee to work to cancel Beijing’s hosting rights for the 2022 Winter Olympics and move the venue to another country.
If the USOC fails to do so, it will take joint action to boycott the games, which amount to “genocide,” women’s rights groups Feminism Without Borders and the Committee to Address Current Dangers in China said in an open letter Thursday (April 15).
The letter begins by reminding those involved that Hitler shamelessly used Germany’s role as host of the 1936 Berlin Olympics to legitimize his regime, consolidate his power and prepare for the Holocaust and World War II.
Today, the open letter said, we are witnessing another totalitarian regime determined to use the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing to impose absolute control internally and vie for global dominance externally. That prospect became even more abhorrent after the U.S. State Department announced that the Chinese Communist Party was committing genocide against millions of Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang, the letter said.
The open letter makes clear that the Chinese Communist Party has committed a host of other appalling crimes against humanity, including: religious persecution, forced abortions and sterilizations, involuntary organ harvesting, forced labor, mass surveillance, detention of political dissidents, unparalleled environmental depredations, and the deliberate creation of a global pandemic of coronavirus.
The signatories of the open letter warn that “the Chinese Communist Party will undoubtedly use the ‘Genocide Games’ as evidence that the world is indifferent to, if not actually supportive of, its crimes against humanity.”
The open letter says that giving the honor of hosting the Winter Olympics to a regime that is likely to be the world’s worst violator of human rights is in direct violation of the Olympic charter. Allowing such a regime to host the Winter Olympics also hurts the world’s best athletes, many of whom undoubtedly do not want to compete as guests of a murderous and despotic regime.
The U.S. government has a responsibility to “punish” anyone found guilty of genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Humanity, adopted by the United Nations in 1948. The letter says it is truly shocking to think that instead of punishing Xi and his associates for this and other crimes against humanity, we are rewarding them for their transnational criminal activities.
The co-sponsors of the open letter urged the U.S. Olympic Committee to lead an urgent international effort to move the Games from Beijing to another location outside of China, whether in the United States or elsewhere. The signatories to the letter say they are working to hold a “Freedom Olympics” to replace the “Genocide Games.
The letter’s co-signers announced their determination to push for a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics if they do not hear back from the U.S. Olympic Committee by April 25.
The U.S. Olympic Committee stated last month that it opposes a boycott of the Beijing Winter Games. Susanne Lyons, president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, said it would be a disservice to the visionaries who have been training for the event.
Signing on behalf of the two NGOs mentioned above were Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president of Feminism Without Borders, and Brian Kennedy, chairman founder and president and chair of the Committee to Address Current Dangers in China. Other signatories are pro-democracy and human rights activists from China, such as Chen Guangcheng, Wang Dan, Fu Xiqiu and Teng Biao, as well as other prominent figures.
The Beijing Winter Olympics are scheduled to take place from Feb. 4 to Feb. 20, 2022. With less than a year to go before the opening of the Winter Olympics, the international boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics continues to heat up. Some 180 international human rights organizations have now joined together to propose a boycott.
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