Washington D.C., May 18, 2021 / 17:00 pm
Congressional leaders called for a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics – if they are held as scheduled in Beijing – due to the ongoing “genocide” against Uyghurs in China.
“In granting Beijing host status for the Olympic Games, we are crowning a barbarous regime with laurels while we should be condemning their abuse and genocide,” stated Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, at a hearing of the commission on Tuesday.
He cited the “genocide” in the region of Xinjiang. According to reports, as many as 1.8 million Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities have been detained in a network of camps, where survivors or relatives of prisoners have reported indoctrination, beatings, torture, forced sterilizations, and other abuses.
Regional authorities have set up a system of mass surveillance and predictive policing outside the camps, in a situation one State Department official last week compared to an “open-air prison.” The largely-Muslim Uyghur population has been subject to repression of religious practices, and children have been separated from their parents and indoctrinated at schools. Forced sterilization, contraception, and abortion on Uyghur women has effected a steep decline in the region’s birth rates.