House Bill Calls for United States to Boycott Beijing Olympics

Rep. Michael Waltz (R., Fla.) introduced a measure on Monday that calls on the United States to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics if they are not moved out of Beijing, China, citing the Communist government’s human rights abuses and failure to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

Waltz, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and a war veteran, said the United States should boycott the games if they are held in China. The resolution calls on the U.S. Olympic Committee to propose a new site outside of China for the 2022 games. If that location is rejected, the “United States Olympic Committee and the Olympic Committees of other countries should withdraw from the 2022 Olympic Games,” the resolution says.

Waltz is just the latest American lawmaker to raise alarm about the Olympic Committee’s decision to keep the games in China as the country wages a genocide against its Uighur ethnic minority, which has been put into forced labor camps and abused. China’s oppression of Democratic protesters in Hong Kong also has been cited as a reason to relocate the Olympics.

“The world cannot legitimize the CCP’s acts of genocide in Xinjiang, destruction of the democratic rights of Hong Kong, and dangerous suppression of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan that cost lives by sending delegations to Beijing,” Waltz said. The resolution further states that holding the event in China would be “immoral, unethical, and wrong.”

The International Hockey Federation recently pulled its 2021 championship series out of Belarus as a result of the country’s human rights infractions. U.S. lawmakers and human rights advocates say that decision should create pressure on the Olympic Committee to follow suit and move its games out of a country that routinely oppresses its citizens and spies on foreigners.

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