Scott: Take Winter Olympics from China

“I am proud to lead my colleagues to send a clear message to the IOC: stand up for freedom and urge Communist China to do the right thing, or find a new home for the 2022 Olympic Games.”

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott introduced a resolution Tuesday urging that the 2022 Winter Olympics be moved from Beijing because of China’s human rights violations.

China “should not be allowed to host the 2022 Olympic Games while simultaneously running concentration camps, violating human rights and systematically oppressing the people of Hong Kong,” Scott said in a statement. “I am proud to lead my colleagues to send a clear message to the IOC: stand up for freedom and urge Communist China to do the right thing, or find a new home for the 2022 Olympic Games.”

Republican U.S. Sens. Mike Braun, Marco Rubio, Todd Young, Tom Cotton, Jim Inhofe, and Marsha Blackburn joined Scott in

— U.S. Sen. Rick Scott

sponsoring the resolution.

Rubio said both the Trump and Biden administrations have made it U.S. official policy that China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority in the western province of Xinjiang.

“It is insane that a country actively involved in egregious human rights abuses that amount to genocide would have the privilege of hosting the Olympics or any other international sporting event,” Rubio said in a statement.

Scott had previously called on NBC to refuse to air the 2022 Games.

It’s unclear how much support the position has in Washington and in the Olympic world, where memories of President Carter’s 1980 boycott of the Moscow Olympics run deep.

Calls to move or boycott the competition “just haven’t really gotten traction among the people who actually decide whether or not to send Olympic teams to Olympic Games,” said Susan Brownell, an Olympics expert and University of Missouri-St. Louis professor.

Groups representing ethnic minorities in China accused the International Olympic Committee of ignoring widespread human rights abuses as the country prepares to hold the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.