Pressure grows to boycott 2022 Olympics
WASHINGTON – The Biden administration is under escalating pressure to push for a U.S. boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics, scheduled for Beijing next February, over China’s rampant human rights abuses.
Human rights groups and some Republicans in Congress say a U.S.-led boycott would send a forceful signal to China, as well as other authoritarian countries, about America’s commitment to democratic freedoms and President Joe Biden’s willingness to confront Beijing over what his own advisers have called “genocide.”
Others say the U.S. should not boycott the Olympics but want Biden to use America’s clout to prod the International Olympic Committee to move the Games from China to another host country.
Either move would be fraught with controversy, mixing sports and geopolitics at a time when U.S.-China tensions are already high. Other countries, including Canada and Australia, are in the midst of a heated debate over whether to endorse a boycott.
Any decisions about a U.S. boycott would ultimately rest with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, which has so far declined to publicly entertain the idea.
Opponents of a boycott say it will accomplish little to nothing – except to deprive star athletes the opportunity to showcase their prowess and to mar what should be a dazzling international spectacle.
Proponents, meanwhile, say Biden and other world leaders cannot turn a blind eye to China’s human rights violations, and they worry that Beijing would use the Games as a stamp of international legitimacy to continue their campaign of repression.
“I can’t imagine giving Beijing this global platform to whitewash everything that’s going on,” said Rep. Michael Waltz, a Florida Republican and lead sponsor of a House resolution urging the U.S. to boycott the Games unless they are moved. “It’s unethical, it’s amoral, it’s just disgusting what’s happening.”
‘Concentration camps’ in China
Much of the outcry is focused on China’s treatment of the Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group in China’s Xinjiang region. Under President Xi Jinping’s leadership, China has detained more than 1 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in “re-education” and labor camps in northwestern China.
In explosive new revelations, the BBC reported last month that women in the camps have been subjected to systematic rape, sexual abuse and torture. Even before that story emerged, the Trump administration declared that China was committing “genocide” in its treatment of the Uyghur people. And the Biden administration concurred.
Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, has blasted the idea of a boycott and dismissed accounts of Uyghur concentration camps as false.
Like other Chinese officials, Wang asserted that China’s treatment of the Uyghurs is “about terrorism and separatism, not about human rights.” The genocide label, he added, “is the lie of the century concocted by extremely anti-China forces. It is a preposterous farce aiming to smear and vilify China.”
But the issue is not going away.
Mounting pressure
On Feb. 3, a coalition of more than 180 human rights groups issued a public letter calling on world leaders to boycott the Games – or risk emboldening the Chinese government’s “appalling rights abuses and crackdowns on dissent.”
In awarding Beijing the coveted Winter Games, some argued it would spur progress in China. Instead, “President Xi Jinping has unleashed an unrelenting crackdown on basic freedom and human rights,” the human rights groups said.
The letter pointed to the Uyghur question, as well as China’s crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and its iron grip on Tibet, where Xi has escalated a campaign to stamp out the region’s identity and culture through “re-educational patriotism.”
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., has been lobbying the IOC and the Games’ corporate sponsors to move the Games.
“I don’t think a country ... that puts over over a million people in prison for their religion, that just took away the basic rights of 7 million Hong Kongers and is threatening Taiwan should be hosting the Olympics,” Scott told USA TODAY. “We can move these Games. There’s plenty of places around the world that can host these Games.”
Olympic committees unwavering
So far, the IOC has been unmoved by pleas to relocate the 2022 Olympics from Beijing, which would be a daunting logistical challenge, and painted itself as an apolitical sporting body. IOC President Thomas Bach has also cautioned against potential boycotts, saying last year that “a sporting boycott only punishes the athletes of the boycotting country.”
Scott blasted the IOC’s stance on Beijing, saying the committee “has just done the financially beneficial thing for them.” He said that unless the Games are moved, companies that sponsor the Olympics will emerge with their bands “tarnished.”
When asked for comment on Scott’s remarks, an IOC spokesperson directed USA TODAY to a lengthy statement it had already released, which says in part that the decision to award the Olympics “does not mean that the IOC agrees with the political structure, social circumstances or human rights standards in its country.”
“The IOC has neither the mandate nor the capability to change the laws or the political system of a sovereign country,” the IOC said.