As the world’s most elite athletes compete in Tokyo, human rights activists are focused on the next Olympic Games – the 2022 Winter Olympics planned for Beijing in just six months.
The communist regime in China stands accused of crimes against humanity, including genocide.
Before the 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing pledged to improve its human rights record, but the communist party reversed course, intensifying repression.
“They realized they had gotten everything they wanted, which was the approval of other countries, so the same thing is going to happen now,” warned China expert and author, Gordon Chang.
The situation in China is so bad now that Chang says it’s hard to fully conceive.
“China’s crimes against humanity, including genocide, are comparable to what the Third Reich did prior to the mass exterminations that began in 1941. These are atrocities that the world has not seen in decades,” Chang told CBN News.
Several lawmakers, including Rep. Mike Waltz, have pushed the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for years to move the upcoming Games out of China.
“There’s over a million Muslim Uyghurs in concentration camps as we speak…the women are partitioned off when they get there, forced into abortions, forced sterilization, mass rape campaigns. It’s horrific and disgusting…add that to the complete erasure over years of the Tibetan Buddhist culture… The Chinese communist party is in an absolute war with any type of religious liberty,” Waltz told CBN News.
After seeing little to no progress with the IOC, he’s now calling for a boycott of the Games.
“I just can’t imagine seeing the American flag flying there, because essentially, to President Xi, who’s a dictator, it’ll be the entire world shrugging their shoulders, turning a blind eye and saying essentially, tacitly, ‘all of that is OK,'” Waltz explained.
Waltz points to the past when the U.S. should have boycotted a host country and didn’t.
“1936 in Germany. People forget that Russia invaded Crimea just months after the 2014 Sochi Games. We’ve seen time after time that dictators are emboldened when the world turns a blind eye,” he said.
At a recent event dubbed The Genocide Games Rally, speakers representing China’s persecuted people groups criticized rewarding the communist regime for its atrocities.
“During my stay in the concentration camp, I was beaten, injured and tortured by unbelievable methods,” one speaker said through tears.
Chang says it’s also important for athletes to truly understand what they risk by competing in China, from 24/7 surveillance to actually having their DNA collected.
“China has a relentlessly determined effort to take the DNA of foreigners… this is ominous. We know that the Chinese military is working on new pathogens. They call it a new type of biological warfare of ‘specific ethnic genetic attacks.’ In other words, pathogens that will leave the Chinese immune but sicken everyone else,” Chang explained.
As of now, the White House isn’t supporting a boycott of the 2022 Winter Games, or responding to safety concerns regarding our athletes. The European Parliament overwhelmingly passed a diplomatic boycott, meaning world leaders will not attend but companies and athletes will still participate.
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