White House shifts thinking on Beijing Winter Olympics boycott as pressure mounts over Uyghur genocide

“President Xi Jinping wants the propaganda boost of the games. He remembers well the widespread praise China received after hosting the Summer Olympics in 2008,” she wrote in an op-ed piece. “Symbolism matters, and if the United States and other free nations participate in Beijing 2022, the Chinese Communist Party will claim it as further proof of China’s good global standing and world leadership.”

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She joins former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a raft of Republican senators, and some 180 rights groups calling either for a boycott or for the 2022 games to be moved from China.

The games are scheduled to begin on Feb. 4, 2022.

At the start of this month, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said there were no discussions about participation in the Olympics.

“We’re not currently talking about changing our posture or our plans as it relates to the Beijing Olympics,” she said.

But on Thursday, she signaled a shift.

“There hasn’t been a final decision made on that,” she said when asked about the issue. “And, of course, we would look for guidance from the U.S. Olympic Committee.”

For its part, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee opposes any boycott.

“We believe the more effective course of action is for the governments of the world and China to engage directly on human rights and geopolitical issues,” it said when the issue began gaining steam earlier this month.

The last U.S. Olympic boycott was in 1980. President Jimmy Carter ordered athletes to stay away from Moscow in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the height of Cold War tensions. Moscow followed suit four years later when the summer games were in Los Angeles.

Now, human rights groups are urging the International Olympic Committee to move the games from China because of the country’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims.

A U.N. panel in 2018 said there were credible reports that as many as 1 million people have been held in labor and detention camps in Xinjiang. Beijing dismissed the accusations, describing the camps as “vocational training centers” designed to root out extremism.

In his final act as secretary of state, Pompeo declared the actions to be genocide, a determination supported by his successor, Antony Blinken.

Republican senators have proposed a resolution calling on the IOC to reopen bidding for the 2022 games so they can be moved elsewhere.

“Communist China should not be allowed to host the 2022 Olympic Games while simultaneously running concentration camps, violating human rights, and systematically oppressing the people of Hong Kong,” said Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, one of the bill’s sponsors.

At the same time, campaigners have begun targeting sponsors such as Airbnb, Coca-Cola, and Visa to undermine the funding of the games.

“With the United States and Canada both declaring the crimes a genocide, the world is waking up to the horrors taking place in the Uyghur region,” said the British group Stop Uyghur Genocide in a statement. “From the use of mass rape in the camps, to slave labor and forced sterilization, the evidence is mounting.”

And politicians in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia all raised the prospect of not sending athletes to Beijing last year.

The issue was raised in the British House of Commons on Wednesday by Ed Davey, a member of the Conservative Party.

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was right to raise the “appalling campaign” against the Uyghurs but said his government was not in favor of sporting boycotts.