Olympic boycotts never work.
You have to wonder what a United States curler is thinking when he or she sees a politician calling for an American boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. A chorus of Republican voices is telling President Joe Biden and his administration to not send athletes to China because of human rights violations or have the Biden administration put pressure on the International Olympic Committee to pull the 2022 event out of China. Here is a tip for the former South Carolina Governor and former American Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. The International Olympic Committee doesn’t care about your FOX News Op Ed or you saying that China is more obviously dangerous today than Nazi Germany was in 1936. The IOC poohbahs probably had a good laugh when they read or heard about your words. The IOC knows where its bread is buttered and the IOC likes China’s money.
The human rights issue involves China and the Uighurs. In July 2020, United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab accused China of “gross and egregious” human rights abuses against the Uighurs. The Trump administration said the treatment of the Uighurs was genocide. No country plans an Olympics boycott at this time. The International Olympic Committee ignored charges of human rights violations in awarding the country the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Winter Games. The 2022 IOC Beijing event is scheduled to start in 11 months. That date though remains in question because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Olympic boycotts never work. American President Jimmy Carter ordered a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Games because the Soviet Union refused to leave Afghanistan. A good number of western countries followed Carter’s lead. The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries did not go to the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games. The Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
