US House Speaker calls for diplomatic boycott of Beijing Winter Olympics
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Nancy Pelosi, president of the U.S. House of Representatives, has become the top U.S. politician to call for a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics for human rights violations. Xinjiang.
Pelosi called on the U.S. and other nations not to send high-level delegations to encourage the Chinese government, which the Biden administration has called a “genocide,” to encourage pressure to persecute Uighurs.
“We can’t move forward with the Olympics going to China as if nothing is wrong,” Pelosi told a hearing on the Human Rights Commission’s Tom Lantos in the House of Representatives. “We have made it clear over the last three decades that we cannot continue to give a blank check to China about the hope that its behavior will change.”
The Biden administration has previously spoken with allies, including the UK and Australia, a diplomatic boycott, but officials say no decision has been made about the games. Last week, the state department said the Chinese government had turned it into Xinjiang “Open-air prison” and that the Biden administration was examining its options to ensure that China would not use the games to achieve a propaganda victory.
Beijing has rejected numerous claims that it has restricted 1 million Uighur Muslims and other minorities to detention camps across the northwestern region, which in some cases are used for forced labor.
A diplomatic boycott would involve governments refusing to send officials or heads of state to the Olympics. The US used the opportunity To protest the Russian anti-gay law at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
“Let us not honor the Chinese government so that heads of state can go to China,” Pelosi said.
Several Republican lawmakers have proposed a diplomatic boycott but Pelosi is a key member of Congress who has pushed for a result because of his long-standing history of human rights criticism of China.
“Being a spokesperson for the House and someone who has worked in China and for decades on human rights is very important,” said Sophie Richardson, China’s director of Human Rights Watch.
“If the Chinese government doubles its human rights crimes, along with the stubbornness and obscurity of the International Olympic Committee, no one should be surprised by this result.”
Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican who is chairing the committee and wants to get the Games out of China, said he will call on U.S. companies sponsoring the 2022 Olympics to testify before Congress.
“We will ask all key US states, especially Coca-Cola, to testify,” Smith told the Financial Times, adding that Mars also wanted to be heard, which is the only U.S. company with a protection contract. Beijing Olympic Committee organizing committee, compared to COI.
“They may lose some money, but they need to realize that the money for the dictatorship that is killing people is badly generated profits.”
FT recently contacted more than two dozen companies with Olympic protection rights denied to comment.
A spokesman for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Commission did not comment on Tuesday. But he has previously said he has opposed boycotts. The U.S. eventually launched a final boycott, in which it withdrew its representation of athletes at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.
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