U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) called on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to not just relocate the 2022 Winter Olympics out of China but ban Chinese athletes from participating in a letter published Thursday.
The call to prevent China from participating in the Games at all is an escalation from the international movement to boycott the Olympics, scheduled to begin in February, as most who oppose the Olympics have called for countries to withdraw their own athletes and corporate sponsors to drop China. Few have addressed what role, if any, Chinese athletes should have in the event.
The two lawmakers, who are part of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), have been in contact with the director-general of the IOC, Christophe De Kepper, encouraging the IOC to reconsider allowing Beijing to host the Olympics given the extensive list of human rights abuses the Communist Party is currently perpetrating. The official stance of the American government under both Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden is that the systematic enslavement, imprisonment, torture, rape, and sterilization of ethnic Uyghur people and other Muslims in China constitutes genocide, arguably the most severe human rights crime a state can commit. The Party has also systematically oppressed Tibetans and other minorities around the country and, for decades, killed and torture political dissidents and members of religious groups the Party does not control.
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