China blasts Pelosi over call to boycott Beijing Olympics

BEIJING • China yesterday said US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was "full of lies" after she called for a diplomatic boycott of next year's Beijing Winter Olympics on human rights grounds.

The run-up to the Games, set for next February, is being dominated by recriminations over widespread allegations of abuse of China's Uighur Muslims and other minorities, which the United States has labelled a "genocide".

Ms Pelosi on Tuesday called for a "diplomatic boycott", in which "lead countries of the world withhold their attendance at the Olympics".

Her comments provoked a fierce response from China, which denies mistreating Uighur minorities and has said internment camps where a huge number of them are held are vocational training centres for countering extremism.

"Some US individuals' remarks are full of lies and disinformation," foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said. "US politicians should stop using the Olympic movement to play despicable political games."

Rights groups say over one million Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang have been held in camps in recent years, their rights to worship and freedoms heavily curtailed by Chinese authorities.

"Let's not honour the Chinese government by having heads of state go to China," Ms Pelosi, a Democrat, told a bipartisan congressional hearing on the Games.

"For heads of state to go to China in light of a genocide that is ongoing - while you're sitting there in your seat - really begs the question, what moral authority do you have to speak again about human rights any place in the world?"

The White House has stopped short of backing a boycott, which is strongly opposed by US athletes.

But lawmakers have been increasingly vocal about an Olympic boycott or venue change, and have lashed out at American corporations, arguing that their silence about what the State Department has deemed a genocide against Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in China was abetting the Chinese government.

Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern said the Games should be relocated. "If we can postpone an Olympics by a year for a pandemic, we can surely postpone the Olympics for a year for a genocide," he said, referring to the decision by Japan and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to delay the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo because of Covid-19.

"This would give the IOC time to relocate to a country whose government is not committing atrocities."

Demands for some form of boycott of the Beijing Games are growing. On Tuesday, a coalition of human rights activists called for athletes to boycott the Games and put pressure on the IOC.

Proponents of Americans competing in Beijing's Olympics say it would be unfair to punish athletes, and that the Games would provide a platform for the United States, which has one of the highest Winter Olympic medal counts, to show its vitality on the global stage.

Ms Sarah Hirshland, chief executive of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, said in a written statement to the hearing that it was concerned about the "oppression of the Uighur population", but that barring US athletes from the Games was "certainly not the answer". She added: "Past Olympic boycotts have failed to achieve political ends - and they should give all of us pause in considering another boycott."

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS