US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for a US diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing on Tuesday, criticizing China for human rights abuses and saying that global leaders present would lose your moral authority.
A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Pelosi’s statements were “full of lies” and that human rights were rapidly developing in China.
US lawmakers are increasingly speaking out about an Olympic boycott or relocation and attacking US corporations, arguing their silence about how the State Department called the massacre of Uygars and other ethnic minorities in China into the Chinese government Was believed to be involved. .
Pelosi, a Democrat, said at a bipartisan congressional hearing on the issue that heads of state around the world should avoid the Games in February.
“What I propose – and with those who are proposing – is a diplomatic boycott,” said Pelosi, in which “the world’s major countries suspend their participation in the Olympics”.
“We are not going to honor the Chinese government by the Heads of States visit to China,” he said.
“For the heads of state to go to China in the light of the ongoing genocide – when you’re sitting there in your seat – it really begs the question: Who do you have anywhere in the world to speak again about human rights? A moral right? ” , Questioned.
An independent United Nations panel said in 2018 that it had received credible reports that at least 1 million Uigars and other Muslims had been housed in camps in China’s Xinjiang region. Beijing describes them as a vocational training center to eradicate extremism and strongly rejects allegations of abuse and genocide.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a regular news conference in Beijing that Pelosi’s statements were “full of lies and false information” and that the United States feared there would be “vigorous development of human rights” in China.
In Washington, Chinese Embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu told Reuters that American efforts to interfere in China’s internal affairs during the Olympics were doomed to fail.
Liu said, “I wonder what some American politicians think they really have so-called moral rights? On human rights issues, they are not in a position to make arbitrary and unfounded criticism against China, nor historically. From nor to the present. “
Kept in account
Republican Congressman Chris Smith, who led the hearing, said corporate sponsors should be called to testify before Congress and be “held accountable”.
“Big companies want to make a lot of money and it doesn’t matter how much cruelty – even genocide – the host country does,” Smith said.
Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern said the Games should be postponed so that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) “has time to go to a country whose government is not persecuting”.
“If we can postpone the Olympics for a year because of an epidemic, then we can definitely postpone the Olympics for a year because of a massacre,” McGovern told the Summer Games in Japan and Tokyo in 2020 Referring to the IOC’s decision to postpone. For Kovid-19 for this year.
There is increasing demand for boycott of Beijing Games in one form or the other.
Last month, Republican Senator Mitt Romney introduced an amendment to comprehensive legislation to include China that would enforce the US diplomatic boycott.
And a coalition of human rights activists on Tuesday urged athletes to boycott the Games and pressurize the IOC.
US President Joe Biden’s government has said it hopes to develop a joint approach with allies to participate in the Beijing Olympics, but Foreign Minister Antony Blinken has repeatedly said that the issue is yet to be discussed Has not been addressed.
When asked about Pelosi’s comments, a senior US government official told Reuters that the government’s position in the 2022 Olympics had not changed.
A Democrat, Biden stated that China is America’s strategic rival and vowed not to let the country advance to the United States under his command.
Supporters of Americans competing in the Beijing Olympics say that it would be unfair to punish the athletes, and the game would be a platform for the United States, which has the highest Winter Olympics medal score to show its vitality at the global level.
Sarah Hirschland, executive director of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, said in a written statement that the committee is concerned with the “oppression of the Uyghur population,” but excluding American athletes from the Games “is certainly not the answer”.
“Previous Olympic boycotts have failed to achieve political goals,” she said.
