Crossfire: Should the U.S. Boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics? 

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“YES”

By MAHIRUL BHUYAN

Right now, about one million Uyghurs are trapped in concentration camps in Xianjiang, China. These innocent prisoners are tortured while their children are taken away to be raised in boarding schools so they become loyal communist subjects. Mosques are being destroyed and Muslims are being forced to eat pork. There are accounts of rape and forced sterilization for Uyghur women. 

The Chinese government under President Xi Jinping disputes these charges of human rights violations, arguing that its "re-education" camps are only in place to combat Islamist extremism. Don’t believe it.

“So now they’re calling reeducation camps ‘hospitals’ meant to cure thinking,” explained James Millward, a professor of Chinese history at Georgetown University. “It’s like an inoculation, a search-and-destroy medical procedure that they want to apply to the whole Uyghur population…But it’s not just giving someone a shot—it’s locking them up for months in bad conditions.” 

Pulling our athletes out of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, scheduled to start February 4, would shine a light on the truth of the Uyghur genocide. Media outlets could use the games to draw attention to China’s acts of abuse against its own people, not only in Xianjiang, but also in Hong Kong. As Minky Worden, an American human rights advocate and author, has said, “The world’s attention is turning to Beijing, and the single greatest point of pressure on Xi Jinping’s China may be the Winter Olympics.”

On December 6, the White House announced they would hold a diplomatic boycott for the Games. China's "ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, as well as other human rights atrocities," will prevent the U.S. from sending official diplomatic representatives, the Biden administration said. 

However, that move is not going to do much. “For the U.S. politicians, who had not been invited, to say they are staging a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, that’s just ‘proffering unreciprocated love’,” Chinese state news agency Xinhua said.

The Communist Party is clearly not bothered by the absence of a few diplomats. According to The Wall Street Journal, the internment camp in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region has doubled in just the past year. Refusing to send athletes, officials, or spectators is what the U.S should have done. It’s the only way to truly make an impact.

This is not the first time something like this has happened. In 1956, due to the Soviet Union's invasion of Hungary, the first major boycott of the games occurred when the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland boycotted the Sydney Olympics. The U.S. boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. We’ve done it before and we can do it again.

The bottom line is that China, with its human rights abuses, is not currently a suitable host for these games. Since President Xi is fearful of damage to his image, we have leverage. Let’s use it.

“NO”

By NICHOLAS RITZ

As we rapidly approach the Winter Olympics’ start date, there are many people who are opposed to the Games being hosted by China, and rightfully so.

The Chinese Communist Party has been denounced for its internment of Uyghurs, a Muslim minority group living within the country, as well as for its arrests of political dissidents and cruel police actions against its own citizens. 

But what do advocates hope to accomplish with a full boycott of the Beijing games, which cannot be moved at this late date? What would be the point of a protest if only one country out of the over 200 that attend participates?

In 1936, there was an attempted boycott of the Winter Olympics set to be held in Berlin, under Nazi Germany. However, this boycott was to avail. Those against it argued that sports should not mix with politics and that if the Olympics were boycotted outright it would be unfair to the athletes who had spent their time training for the chance to compete. The American Olympic Committee president at the time, Avery Brundage, insisted that “politics has no place in sport.” 

As two-time Olympic silver medalist hurdler Terrence Trammell recently said, “Being 17, 18 years old, I think you would really be torn not to want to put on display your hard work, your efforts. The Olympics only comes once every four years.”

This point rings especially true for all of those competing in the Games after seeing the Summer Olympics delayed a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. There are athletes who’ve spent their time in quarantine, and even years before, training for this moment. It’s not right to force them to wait simply because others believe they should. 

Black Olympic track star Jesse Owens felt pressure to not compete in the 1936 Berlin games. But his coach at Ohio State, Larry Snyder, pushed for Owens to go, saying, “Why should we oppose Germany for doing something that we do right here at home?,” referring to the racial segregation in America that was still legal at the time. 

Though times have changed since then, it is still unfair for the United States to judge other countries in their practices when there are many problems within our country itself that need to be addressed. It is also hypocritical to pass judgment on China when the U.S. was guilty of a very similar crime during World War II – the internment of Japanese Americans after the Pearl Harbor attack. The Olympics were canceled in 1944 due to the war, but would we have boycotted ourselves back then had we hosted them?

To boycott the Olympics would not be worth the little acknowledgment the Chinese government would give it, especially considering the sacrifice of those athletes who have worked to make it to such a grand event. China’s human rights abuses deserve to be addressed, but not this way.