The United States has announced a diplomatic boycott of 2022 Olympics to be held in Beijing, China. The White House said the decision is an outcome of China’s “egregious” rights abuses, a move the Chinese government has said would be met with “resolute countermeasures”.
The White House said the US would not send an official delegation to the games in protest against Chinese human rights abuses, including Beijing’s treatment of Muslim Uighurs in its western Xinjiang region.
“US diplomatic or official representation would treat these Games as business as usual in the face of the PRC’s egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang – and we simply can’t do that,” she said.
Psaki added that the diplomatic boycott, which has been encouraged by some members of the US Congress for months, would not affect the attendance of American athletes, who have the “full support” of the Biden administration.
The move comes just days before US President Joe Biden will host a virtual “Summit for Democracy” gathering of leaders and civil society actors from more than 100 countries on Thursday and Friday.
The administration has said that Biden intends to use the gathering “to announce both individual and collective commitments, reforms, and initiatives to defend democracy and human rights at home and abroad”.
The Chinese embassy in Washington described the US boycott as “political manipulation” later on Monday, stressing that the decision would not affect the Olympics.
“No invitation has been extended to US politicians whatsoever, so this ‘diplomatic boycott’ simply comes out of nowhere,” embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told the Reuters news agency in an emailed statement.
“Such a pretentious act is only a political manipulation and a grave distortion of the spirit of the Olympic Charter,” he said.
Before the announcement, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said those calling for a boycott are “grandstanding” and should stop “so as not to affect the dialogue and cooperation between China and the United States in important areas”.
