The US National Olympic Committee (NOC) has appreciated the idea of boycotting the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing. According to its head Susan Lyons, many are worried about the human rights situation in China, but the committee does not support the idea of a boycott of the games. This is reported by TASS.
Lyons said the US NOC “would not like to underestimate what is happening in China from a human rights perspective,” but she stressed that the committee does not support a boycott by athletes of the Olympic Games.
Earlier, a coalition of 180 human rights organizations called for a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing due to human rights violations, including repression of Uyghur Muslims. Human rights activists noted that they had already appealed to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) with a demand not to hold games in China, but their arguments remained unheard. The organizations stressed that now it is the turn of the governments of the countries of the world to take a firm position on this issue.
In January, the United States recognized the repression against Uighur Muslims in China as genocide. The US administration assures that the “genocide” has been going on since at least 2017 and the Chinese authorities are systematically destroying the Uyghurs.
In July 2020, it became known that state documents of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomy indicate the intention of the Chinese authorities to sterilize thousands of Uyghur women. According to the budget of two settlements, which was studied by Foreign Policy, the state allocated money for the sterilization of 14.8 thousand women in the city and just over 8 thousand in the province, as well as the installation of 5.9 thousand contraceptive uterine spirals. These measures are part of a comprehensive approach by the Chinese authorities to the Uyghur minority, which is condemned in several Western countries.