The U.S. on Monday introduced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, a transfer that had garnered bipartisan assist from critics of China’s human rights report.
While U.S. athletes will nonetheless take part, President Joe Biden’s administration won’t ship any official illustration to the video games, given China’s “ongoing genocide and crimes in opposition to humanity in Xinjiang and different human rights abuses,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki informed reporters.
Psaki was referring to China’s reported remedy of Uighur Muslims in that northwestern territory that has been declared a genocide each by Biden and the administration of former President Donald Trump.
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“The athletes on Team USA have our full assist. We will likely be behind them one hundred pc as we cheer them on from residence. We won’t be contributing to the fanfare of the video games,” Psaki stated.
“U.S. diplomatic or official illustration would deal with these video games as enterprise as regular within the face of the [People’s Republic of China’s] egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang, and we merely cannot do this,” she stated.
“We will proceed to take actions to advance human rights in China and past,” she stated.
The transfer, which was anticipated, was preemptively criticized earlier Monday by China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian. “It is a travesty of the Olympic spirit, it’s political provocation, and an offense to the 1.4 billion Chinese individuals,” he stated, in keeping with a translation of his remarks.
“If the U.S. is insistent on happening the mistaken path, China will take vital and resolute countermeasures,” Zhao stated.
The Chinese authorities underneath President Xi Jinping has been condemned by dozens of nations over its actions in Xinjiang, in addition to its crackdown in opposition to pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong in 2019 and 2020.
More just lately, Beijing has come underneath hearth following the weekslong disappearance of tennis star Peng Shuai, who vanished after publicly accusing a former senior official within the Chinese Communist Party of sexual assault.
The Women’s Tennis Association introduced final week it should droop tournaments in China instantly on account of considerations over the remedy and security of Peng and different gamers.
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