Rick Scott Continues to Call on IOC to Move 2022 Olympic Games Out of China

This week, following a series of stories detailing Communist China’s oppression and genocide of Uyghurs, a religious and ethnic minority living in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., sent a letter to the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) Executive Board members urging them to stand up for human rights and move the 2022 Olympic Games out of China.

For more than a year, Scott has been calling on the IOC to stand up for freedom and urge Communist China to stop violating human rights, or find a new home for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.

Dear Mr. Bach:

In last week’s edition of The Economist, two essays, excerpts of which I have included with this letter, documented the campaign of genocide the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is leading against the Uyghurs, a religious and ethnic minority living in the northwestern province of Xinjiang.

In Xinjiang, the CCP has established hundreds of concentration camps in order to imprison, torture and enslave Uyghurs. Uyghur children are separated from parents and are taken to orphanages where Han Chinese and CCP officials pressure them to renounce their Uyghur culture. Through torture, the CCP threatens Uyghurs to forsake their language, their faith and their culture. When they are not being tortured, they work as slave laborers in factories. Guards in the concentration camps beat those who profess belief in a god. Uyghur women are forcibly sterilized and have intrauterine devices placed inside them to prevent more births of Uyghurs. Some have abortions forcibly performed on them.

For those who are not inside the concentration camps, the CCP has built a draconian surveillance state, and have coupled Orwellian artificial intelligence and facial recognition software with local spies so that neighbors and family members are required to report “suspicious behavior,” such as praying. The oppression is so far-reaching that even Uyghurs living abroad are scared to discuss the abuses in Xinjiang because Beijing continues to surveil them and may harm them and their families if they tell the truth about what is happening in the concentration camps. Uyghurs who do speak out are disowned by their friends and families in Xinjiang to avoid association and potential retribution.

Communist China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs, and it doesn’t end there. Recent reports indicate that the CCP is attempting the same thing in Tibet, coercing hundreds of thousands of people in Tibet into mass labor camps.

I am sending you these essays because Beijing is preparing to host to the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Under no circumstance should Communist China be allowed to host the world’s greatest athletic competition while simultaneously holding its Muslim citizens in concentration camps. General Secretary Xi and the CCP do not respect human dignity and refuse to abide by the principles of Olympism. How can the International Olympic Committee (IOC) turn a blind eye to genocide? How can the international community be comfortable giving the regime a platform to whitewash its crimes?

Freedom-loving nations around the world must come out and say that we will not stand for this. The IOC must come out and say it will not prop up a regime that is committing genocide on its people. I urge you to immediately begin working to find a new host city for the 2022 Olympics – one that respects human rights. Do not repeat the mistake of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. For the sake of the Uyghurs, for the sake of the safety of the athletes and the attendees, and for the sake of basic human dignity, move the 2022 Games out of Communist China.