Washington: The United States is considering the Beijing Olympic diplomatic boycott, President Joe Biden is confirmed on Thursday, a step that will be aimed at protesting the records of Chinese human rights, including what Washington said is genocide against Muslim minorities.
“Something we consider,” Biden said when asked whether diplomatic boycott was being considered when he sat down for a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Diplomatic boycott will mean that US officials will not attend the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics in February.
The US decision not to send diplomats will be a rebuke of China’s President XI Jinping only a few days after XI and Biden worked to facilitate tensions in the virtual summit, their main talk since Biden served in January.
Activists and Congress members from both parties have suppressed the Biden administration to close by boycotting the event given that the US government accused China of implementing genocide against the Muslim ethnic group in the West Xinjiang region, something denunciates by Beijing.
White House spokesman Jen PSaki said regular briefing on Thursday that the US consideration of diplomatic boycott from the winter Olympics was driven by concerns about human rights practices in the province of Xinjiang.
“There is an area that we are worried about: human rights violations,” PSAKI told reporters.
“We have a serious problem.” “Of course there are various factors when we see what we will face,” he said, while decreasing to give a timeline for a decision.
“I want to leave the president’s room to make a decision,” he said.
The source with knowledge of government thinking has told Reuters there was a consensus that developed inside the White House that the US official had to get away from the match.
Last week, US State Secretary Antony Blinken said Washington was talking to countries around the world about “how they thought about participation,” but left the deadline for unclear decisions.
A group of US senator bipartis in October proposes an amendment to the annual defense policy bill which will ban the US State Department from spending federal funds to “support or facilitate” the presence of US government employees in the match.
Nancy Pelosi’s democratic home speaker also called for diplomatic boycott, said the global leaders who were present would lose their moral authority.
Some Republican Parliament members have called for the complete olympic boycott.
Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas said at a press conference on Thursday that diplomatic boycott about what he called “Genocide Olympiad” would be “too little, late” and said no US athletes, officials, or sponsors of US companies had to take part.
Nikki Haley, former US Second Ambassador to the United Nations, also called for a complete boycott, by saying that attending will send a message that America willing to close the eyes for genocide.