President Joe Biden recently spoke out against China’s treatment of the Uyghurs and compared it to the Holocaust. Yet he still has not given any direction about what the United States will do with the 2022 Winter Olympics, scheduled for February in Beijing.
Biden’s shouts of “your silence is complicity” would have a lot more of an effect if he and his administration weren’t staying silent on this issue. The International Olympic Committee, which takes political stances on everything from Taiwan to the Taliban, is doing the same, urging for a “political neutral ground.” Just as the IOC rewarded China with hosting the games, the U.S. currently plans to reward China by quietly attending the propaganda fest.
Reflecting on Nuremberg, @JoeBiden likens atrocities against Uyghurs today to complicity during the Holocaust.
“We cannot say that the specter of atrocity is behind us […] the oppression and use of forced labor of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.” pic.twitter.com/C2m39VHQ2Y
— Peter Irwin (@PeterIrwin_) October 18, 2021
Biden signing off on America’s participation simply guarantees that the IOC will feel free to give future contests to genocidal regimes such as China or totalitarian states such as Russia. China in particular has tried to carve out a role as a host for global sports competitions, and the country hosted IOC events in 2008 and 2014. And, as we’ve seen in the past, hosting the Olympics has emboldened dictators and authoritarians more than once.
Despite all of this, silence is all the Biden administration has offered. The idea of a boycott was immediately dismissed back in April, and since then, there has been no word on anything related to the games from Biden or his subordinates, even as human rights activists and legislators continue to raise the issue.
This would be Biden’s chance to send a message about human rights and the Uyghurs, but it is predictable he hasn’t said much. After all, Biden has never been one to be too tough on China, and there is no reason to expect him to turn it around now that he’s the president. There is no reason the U.S. should be sending Americans to compete in the “Genocide Games,” a fact that Biden wants to avoid while declaring that “your silence is complicity.”
