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US President Joe Biden revealed that he is considering a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing, as pressure from Congress intensifies over China’s suspected human rights abuses against the Uygurs and other ethnic minority groups in the far-west Xinjiang region.
It is “something we are considering”, Biden said on Thursday, as he sat down for a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – the clearest indication yet that the administration may end up taking the rare step of refusing to send any government officials to an Olympic Games. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3156592/joe-biden-says-us-considering-diplomatic-boycott-beijing
Last month, US senators proposed a draft amendment to a bill that would ban the US State Department from spending government funds to "support or facilitate" the attendance of US diplomats at the Games.
Nancy Pelosi, the most senior Democrat in Congress, has called for a boycott, saying that US leaders who attend would lose their "moral authority". Republican Senator Tom Cotton said on Thursday that diplomatic boycott of the "genocide Olympics" would be "too little, too late" and called for a total boycott of all athletes, officials and US corporatem sponsors. Nikki Haley, the former US representative to the UN under Donald Trump, has also called for a complete boycott. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59340859
Abuses against the Uyghur community, as well as a crackdown on free speech in Hong Kong, have prompted calls from about 180 human rights organizations and members of Congress to use the Olympics as an opportunity to hold China accountable. But while some see a diplomatic boycott as a way to send a message without punishing U.S. athletes, others questioned the effectiveness of withholding a government delegation when public attention is on the athletic competition.
“Whether we want it or not, the Olympics in Beijing are going to happen,” said Frédéric Mégret, a co-director of the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism at McGill University and an international human rights lawyer. “The question is: Do you want to give the Chinese government photo ops?”
READ MORE: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/us/politics/beijing-olympics-boycott.html