May 19 2021- 2:00 p.m.
China’s foreign ministry spokesman accused U.S. leaders of promoting “disinformation” after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for a “diplomatic boycott” of 2022’s Olympics.
The California Democrat called for the boycott of Beijing’s Winter Games “in light of a genocide.” Pelosi made the plea Tuesday during a joint hearing before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission and Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
“For heads of state to go to China in light of a genocide that is ongoing while you’re sitting there in your seats really begs the question — what moral authority do you have to speak about human rights any place in the world?” Pelosi said. “Let’s have a diplomatic boycott if, in fact, this Olympics takes place. Silence on this issue is unacceptable; it enables China’s abuses.”
China’s foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, responded a day later, saying, “Some U.S. individuals’ remarks are full of lies and disinformation,” without mentioning Pelosi by name.
“U.S. politicians should stop using the Olympic movement to play despicable political games” and using “the so-called human rights issue as a pretext to smear and slander China,” he said.
Zhao also pointed to the United States’s record on human rights, emphasizing “the continuing spread of xenophobia, white supremacy, and discrimination against people of African and Asian descent and Islamophobia.”
One of the driving issues behind Pelosi’s and others’ remarks is China’s treatment of its Uyghur minority, which the Biden administration has called a “genocide,” despite China’s rejection of that characterization.
Pelosi is not the only U.S. legislator to call for action regarding the Olympics in 2022.
Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern proposed moving the location of the games, even if it means delaying them a year.
“If we can postpone an Olympics by a year for a pandemic, we can surely postpone the Olympics for a year for a genocide. … This would give the IOC time to relocate to a country whose government is not committing atrocities,” he said.
The Summer Olympics were supposed to take place in 2020, but the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic forced a postponement. It is scheduled to take place this summer instead, but Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is under pressure to contain another surge of coronavirus infections or cancel it.
