U.S. officials to boycott Beijing Olympics over rights ‘atrocities’

07 Dec U.S. officials to boycott Beijing Olympics over rights ‘atrocities’

The United States will not send government officials to the 2022 Winter Olympics due to China’s human rights “atrocities,” the White House said on Monday, after Beijing threatened unspecified “countermeasures” against any diplomatic boycott.

President Joe Biden said last month that he was considering such a boycott amid criticism of China’s human rights record, including what Washington says is genocide against minority Muslims in its western region of Xinjiang.

The move – despite a recent effort to stabilize ties with a video meeting last month between Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping – is certain to further strain the two superpowers’ relations which have been at their lowest point in decades.

“The Biden administration will not send any diplomatic or official representation to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games given the PRC’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told a daily press briefing.

“U.S. diplomatic or official representation would treat these games as business as usual in the face of the PRC’s egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang, and we simply can’t do that,” Psaki said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

The diplomatic boycott, which has been encouraged by some members of the U.S. Congress and rights advocacy groups for months, would not affect the attendance of American athletes, she said.

“The athletes on Team USA have our full support. We will be behind them 100% as we cheer them on from home.”

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a news briefing earlier in Beijing that those calling for a boycott are “grandstanding” and should stop “so as not to affect the dialogue and cooperation between China and the United States in important areas.”

“If the U.S. insists in wilfully clinging to its course, China will take resolute countermeasures,” he said, without elaborating.