Bipartisan Group of House Lawmakers Push for Boycott of 2022 Beijing Olympics Over Uyghur Genocide

A bipartisan radical of House lawmakers is pushing for a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics, scheduled to beryllium held successful Beijing, implicit China’s systematic genocide against the Uyghur colonisation successful Xinjiang.

“No funds appropriated pursuant to immoderate appropriations Acts oregon different appropriated whitethorn beryllium expended to alteration immoderate United States serviceman oregon authoritative to be the 2022 Olympic Games successful the People’s Republic of China,” reads a projected amendment to beryllium included successful the yearly State Department backing bill, which is presently nether introspection by the House Appropriations Committee.

The amendment was projected by Representative Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) and co-sponsored by Representative Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.).

If the amendment is approved, it would barroom the State Department from allocating immoderate funds that would beryllium utilized to transport United States officers oregon officials to the 2022 Winter Olympics.

“When this medication and the past medication person some said officially and unofficially that there’s an ongoing genocide (in China), I can’t ideate that we would nonstop a delegation astatine all,” Waltz said, noting that some the Trump and Biden administrations person acknowledged that determination is an ongoing genocide successful China.

Malinowski has spoken out against China regarding this substance before.

“There’s nary specified happening arsenic non-political games—dictatorships similar China big the Olympics to validate their lasting arsenic mean and respected countries adjacent arsenic they proceed to perpetrate crimes against their people,” Malinowski said successful a connection successful June. “Today’s coordinated enactment by legislators successful aggregate democracies is simply a wide awesome to the International Olympic Committee that we’re fed up with its soundlessness astir China’s ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs.”

The Senate past period approved a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming wintertime games arsenic portion of a bill––The United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021––that passed with bipartisan support.