Nancy Pelosi calls for 'diplomatic boycott' of China's 2022 Olympics, questions morality

United States House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on May 19 called for America’s diplomatic boycott of the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. She also denounced China for the reported human rights violations and declared the global leaders who choose to attend the event as losing their moral authority. While US-China relations have continued to deteriorate over a range of issues, several US lawmakers have grown more public about their call for boycotting the Beijing Olympics 2022 or have proposed to change the venue. 

American lawmakers have even lambasted US-based corporations for their silence against what the US State Department has termed a ‘genocide’ of China’s religious minority of Uyghurs along with other communities. According to those US lawmakers, such firms are abetting the Chinese government, which has repeatedly denied all allegations of human rights abuses in the country. Amid the tensions, Pelosi told a virtual bipartisan congressional hearing on Tuesday that heads of state should boycott the games which are scheduled for February 2022.

"What I propose, and join those who are proposing, is a diplomatic boycott," Pelosi said, in which "lead countries of the world withhold their attendance at the Olympics...Let's not honour the Chinese government by having heads of state go to China," she added.

"For heads of state to go to China in light of a genocide that is ongoing, while you're sitting there in your seat, really begs the question, what moral authority do you have to speak again about human rights any place in the world?" US House Speaker said.

China's Uyghur Repression Not Just Cultural But 'Physical'

Meanwhile, a report published last week titled, ‘Family De-planning: The Coercive Campaign to Drive Down Indigenous Birth-rates in Xinjiang’ indicates that the drop in Uyghur birth rates could be due to the mass sterilisation, coerced birth control and punitive family policies forced by the government. The research is authored by Nathan Ruser and James Leibold for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and it further highlights the revelations made in another report published in 2020 by researcher Adrian Zenz for the Jamestown Foundation. 

The drop in Uyghur birth rates as per news agency ANI provides evidence documenting the Chinese government’s systematic and stringent clampdown on the ethnic minority and its efforts to reduce the size of the indigenous population of Xinjiang through several birth control policies. According to the report, the Chinese Communist Party's repression of Uyghurs is not only cultural but also physical.

"In the name of stability and control, the CCP under President Xi Jinping is seeking to fundamentally transform the social and physical landscape of Xinjiang. This includes the construction of hundreds of prison-like detention centres and the mass internment of Uyghurs, Kazakh and other indigenous nationalities," it said.

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