‘Diplomatic boycott’ of Olympics?

WASHINGTON >> House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday called for a U.S. diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, criticizing China for human rights abuses and saying global leaders who attend would lose their moral authority.

U.S. lawmakers have been increasingly vocal about an Olympic boycott or venue change, and have lashed out at American corporations, arguing their silence about what the State Department has deemed a genocide of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China was abetting the Chinese government.

Pelosi, a Democrat, told a bipartisan congressional hearing on the issue that heads of state around the world should shun the Games, scheduled for February.

“What I propose — and join those who are proposing — is a diplomatic boycott,” Pelosi said, in which “lead countries of the world withhold their attendance at the Olympics.”

“Let’s not honor the Chinese government by having heads of state go to China,” she added.

“For heads of state to go to China in light of a genocide that is ongoing — while you’re sitting there in your seat — really begs the question, what moral authority do you have to speak again about human rights any place in the world?” she said.

An independent United Nations panel said in 2018 it had received credible reports that at least 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslims had been held in camps in China’s Xinjiang region. Beijing describes them as vocational training centers to stamp out extremism, and strongly rejects accusations of abuse and genocide.

Chinese Embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu told Reuters that U.S. attempts to interfere in China’s domestic affairs over the Olympics were doomed to fail.

“I wonder what makes some U.S. politicians think they actually have the socalled ‘moral authority’? On human rights issues, they are in no position, either historically or currently, to make wanton groundless criticism against China,” Liu said.

Republican Congressman Chris Smith, who led the hearing, said corporate sponsors should be called to testify before Congress and be “held to account.”

“Big business wants to make lots of money, and it doesn’t seem to matter what cruelty — even genocide — that the host nation commits,” Smith said.

Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern added the Games should be postponed to give the International Olympic Committee time to “relocate to a country whose government is not committing atrocities.”

“If we can postpone an Olympics by a year for a pandemic, we can surely postpone the Olympics for a year for a genocide,” McGovern said, referring to the decision by Japan and the IOC to delay the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo due to COVID-19.