Beijing Winter Olympics: The move will not deter US athletes from competing. (file)
Washington:
The United States on Monday announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, a calibrated rebuke of China’s human rights record that prevents American athletes from competing.
The decision comes after Washington spent months deciding what position to take at the Games, to be held in February next year, by a country accused of carrying out “genocide” against Uighur Muslims in the northwestern Xinjiang region. .
There was no immediate reaction from Beijing, but the Chinese foreign ministry had previously threatened “firm retaliation” for any such boycott.
The decision was widely welcomed by rights groups and politicians in the US, where President Joe Biden was under pressure to speak out against Chinese rights abuses.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the administration would not send any diplomatic or official representation to the Games in view of China’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity and other human rights abuses” in Xinjiang.
Sending an official representation would indicate that the games were “business as usual”, Saki said.
“And we just can’t do that.”
“We have our full support for the Team USA athletes. We will be 100 per cent behind them as we encourage them from home,” he added.
The International Olympic Committee said whether or not to send the officials was “a purely political decision for each government, which the IOC fully respects in its political neutrality.”
“The announcement also makes it clear that the Olympic Games and athletes’ participation go beyond politics and we welcome that,” an IOC spokesman said.
diplomatic high wire act
US-China relations hit a low point under Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump with a massive trade war and incendiary debate over how the Covid-19 virus first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
Biden has sought to reconnect with Beijing, while at the same time focusing on strengthening traditional US alliances to counter China’s ever-increasing economic clout and military presence in the Indo-Pacific.
The Olympic boycott is part of a complex diplomatic balancing act.
Biden’s administration has dropped Trump-era trade tariffs on China and continues to order naval patrols through sensitive international sea lanes that China is accused of trying to bring under its control.
However, with Biden also emphasizing the need for dialogue, critics say he is being too soft.
This makes the upcoming Olympic Games a political flashpoint.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said Team USA members, their coaches, coaches and other staff would still receive consular and diplomatic security assistance.
Asked about calls for private businesses to end any sponsorship of the Winter Games, he insisted the decision was up to him.
“It is not in this country – unlike in other countries – that the role of government is to guide the practices that the private sector should adopt,” Price said.
‘Powerful rebuke’
Campaigners say at least one million Uighurs and other Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim minorities have been imprisoned in camps in Xinjiang, where China has also been accused of forcibly sterilizing women and employing forced labor.
Bob Menendez, chairman of the powerful US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, hailed the diplomatic boycott as “a powerful rebuke” of the “genocide in Xinjiang”.
He and top House foreign affairs Democrat Gregory Meeks called on other countries to follow the US lead.
Meeks warned that the international community should not help China “whitewash its atrocities against Uighurs and other minorities”.
But Republican Senator Tom Cotton called it “a half-measure, when bold leadership was needed”.
“The United States must completely boycott the Genocide Games in Beijing,” he said in a statement.
The last outright boycott of the Olympics by the US was in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter withdrew in protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
Human Rights Watch called the Biden administration’s decision “important” but urged greater accountability for “the people responsible for these crimes and justice for the survivors.”
Earlier on Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian warned that the Games were “not a forum for political currency and manipulation” – in response to reports a boycott could be imminent.
“If America is determined to go its own way, China will take a firm retaliation,” he said.
Just six months after the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Summer Games, the Winter Olympics will be held from February 4 to 20 in a “closed loop” bubble due to COVID-19 restrictions.
The Chinese state-owned newspaper Global Times tweeted, “Honestly speaking, the Chinese are relieved to hear the news, because the less US officials come, the less the virus will come.”
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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