No U.S. official will attend Beijing Winter Olympics, White House announces

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Source: Washington Post

The United States will not send President Biden or any U.S. government official to the Beijing Winter Olympics in February in a signal of displeasure over China’s human rights abuses, the White House announced Monday. The diplomatic boycott allows American athletes to participate in the Games, but is a significant political snub of Washington’s greatest military and economic competitor.

Pressure to mount such a boycott has been building for months, with lawmakers from both parties and human rights advocates calling on the Biden administration not to attend in response to Beijing’s repressive policies against democracy activists in Hong Kong and Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region. Biden told reporters last month he was weighing a diplomatic boycott.

The decision stands in contrast to 1980, when President Jimmy Carter kept U.S. officials and athletes out of the Summer Games in Moscow in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Though more than 60 countries joined the boycott in 1980, hundreds of American athletes were deprived of their chance at Olympic glory. The U.S. government cannot unilaterally bar athletes from the Olympics or declare a boycott. The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, an independent nonprofit organization, has sole authority to make the final call.

“I want to stress that the Winter Olympic Games is not a stage for political posturing and manipulation,” said Zhao Lijian, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, on Monday, responding to reports a boycott announcement was imminent. “U.S. politicians keep hyping a ‘diplomatic boycott’ without even being invited to the Games. This wishful thinking and pure grandstanding is aimed at political manipulation. It is a grave travesty of the spirit of the Olympic Charter, a blatant political provocation and a serious affront to the 1.4 billion Chinese people.” 

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/us-beijing-winter-olympics-diplomatic-boycott/2021/12/06/1d2e9920-56b1-11ec-9a18-a506cf3aa31d_story.html