U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on leaders to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing on Tuesday (18). She criticized China for human rights abuses and said leaders attending the Beijing Winter Olympics “will lose their moral authority.
The State Department earlier characterized a series of Chinese measures against the Uighur and other minorities as genocide, and calls for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics or a change of venue have been growing in U.S. political circles, with many politicians criticizing some U.S. companies for being “tantamount to abetting the Chinese government” by remaining silent about the genocide. The Chinese government has also been criticized by many politicians for their silence on the genocide as “tantamount to abetting the Chinese government.
Pelosi, a Democrat, told a bipartisan congressional hearing on the Beijing Winter Olympics that heads of state around the world should recuse themselves from the opening ceremony of the games, scheduled for February.
An independent U.N. panel said in 2018 that it had received credible reports that at least 1 million Uighurs and other Muslims were being held in camps in China’s Xinjiang region.
Beijing insists the camps are vocational training centers, adding that they were set up to “stamp out extremism” and strongly denying allegations of abuse and genocide.
The U.S. government has said it wants to work with allies to develop ways to participate in the Beijing Olympics, but Secretary of State Blinken has repeatedly said the issue has not been addressed in discussions.
Supporters of American participation in the Beijing Winter Olympics say it is unfair to punish athletes and that the Games will provide a platform for the United States, which has the most medals in the Winter Games, to showcase its dynamism on a global stage.
Sarah Hirshland, chief executive officer of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, said in a written statement that the committee is concerned about “the oppression of Uighurs” but that banning U.S. athletes from the Games “is certainly not the answer. ”
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