Title: Urging that the International Olympic Committee rebid the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, and expressing the sense of Congress that the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee should not participate if the Games are held in the People's Republic of China and that the United States Government should lead an international boycott if the Games are held in the People's Republic of China, and for other purposes.
Policy area: International Affairs

Summary:
This resolution calls on the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee to support human rights and boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics if it is held in China. The resolution also expresses support for the committee's athletes, coaches, and personnel.

[Congressional Bills 117th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 162 Introduced in House (IH)]

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117th CONGRESS
  1st Session
H. RES. 162

Urging that the International Olympic Committee rebid the 2022 Olympic 
  Winter Games, and expressing the sense of Congress that the United 
  States Olympic & Paralympic Committee should not participate if the 
 Games are held in the People's Republic of China and that the United 
States Government should lead an international boycott if the Games are 
    held in the People's Republic of China, and for other purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           February 24, 2021

Mr. Waltz (for himself, Mr. Reschenthaler, and Mr. Katko) submitted the 
 following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign 
Affairs, and in addition to the Committee on Oversight and Reform, for 
a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for 
consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the 
                          committee concerned

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
Urging that the International Olympic Committee rebid the 2022 Olympic 
  Winter Games, and expressing the sense of Congress that the United 
  States Olympic & Paralympic Committee should not participate if the 
 Games are held in the People's Republic of China and that the United 
States Government should lead an international boycott if the Games are 
    held in the People's Republic of China, and for other purposes.

Whereas, in 2015, the International Olympic Committee announced Beijing, the 
        capital city of the People's Republic of China, as the host city of the 
        2022 Olympic Winter Games;
Whereas the Olympic charter states the goal of Olympism is to promote ``a 
        peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity'';
Whereas, according to the September 2020 House of Representatives China Task 
        Force Report, the Government of China is the leading human rights abuser 
        in the world, depriving 1,400,000,000 human beings of their fundamental 
        rights;
Whereas, since 2017, the Government of China has detained and persecuted up to 
        1,800,000 Turkic Muslims, including ethnic Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz, 
        in ``political re-education'' centers, and many detainees who have not 
        ``graduated'' from the facilities have been convicted of formal crimes 
        and sentenced to prison terms;
Whereas detained and imprisoned Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur 
        Autonomous Region (XUAR) are held arbitrarily and without due process, 
        coerced to disavow religious beliefs and cultural practices, forced to 
        work in factories, deprived of food and other essential needs, and 
        subjected to physical abuse, including torture and alleged organ 
        harvesting;
Whereas the Government of China is implementing a policy of employing large 
        numbers of Uyghurs, including former detainees, in labor-intensive 
        factories in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China under forced labor 
        conditions;
Whereas the Government of China has implemented policies against minority groups 
        in the XUAR to lower birth rates, including forced abortions, 
        sterilizations, and contraception;
Whereas according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, an estimated 
        8,500 mosques have been demolished in the XUAR, and nearly 30 percent of 
        Islamic shrines, cemeteries, and other sites of religious importance in 
        the region have been damaged or destroyed, mostly since 2017;
Whereas the annual report of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China for 
        2020 indicates--

    (1) the Government of China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have 
taken unprecedented steps in the last year to extend their repressive 
policies through censorship, intimidation, and the detention of individuals 
and groups for exercising their fundamental human rights, especially in the 
XUAR and Hong Kong;

    (2) in XUAR, it is now estimated that up to 1.8 million Uyghurs, 
Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Hui, and others have been arbitrarily detained in a system 
of extrajudicial mass internment camps where they are subjected to forced 
labor, torture, and political indoctrination;

    (3) forced labor in the XUAR is widespread and systematic and exists 
within the mass internment camps and elsewhere throughout the region, as 
part of a targeted campaign of repression against Turkic and Muslim 
minorities;

    (4) detention of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Hui, and others in mass 
internment camps in the XUAR since around April 2017, and authorities have 
also increasingly sentenced ethnic minority individuals to lengthy prison 
terms for political reasons since 2017;

    (5) in Hong Kong, the ``one country, two systems'' framework has been 
dismantled, severely undermining the rule of law and respect for human 
rights that the territory has long enjoyed, and authorities arrested 
prodemocracy leaders, prevented journalists from reporting, applied 
political pressure on the judiciary, and allowed the Hong Kong Police Force 
to grow increasingly abusive toward nonviolent protesters; and

    (6) the Government of China and CCP have further intensified campaigns 
that aim to bring religion in China under closer official control, and 
authorities have expanded campaigns to target, control, and surveil not 
only religions deemed ``foreign'' like Christianity, Islam, and Tibetan 
Buddhism, but also traditional Chinese religions;

Whereas Article 2 of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and 
        Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which both the United States and 
        China have ratified, defines genocide as ``any of the following acts 
        committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, 
        ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) killing members of the 
        group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the 
        group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life 
        calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; 
        (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [or] 
        (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.'';
Whereas, on January 19, 2021, the Department of State determined that the 
        Government of China, under the direction and control of the CCP, ``has 
        committed genocide against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other 
        ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang'', and on the same day, 
        Secretary of State Antony Blinken agreed, stating, ``forcing men, women 
        and children into concentration camps, trying to in effect re-educate 
        them to be adherents to the Chinese Communist Party--all of that speaks 
        to an effort to commit genocide'';
Whereas, in June 2020, the legislature of China passed a national security law 
        for Hong Kong restricting basic political rights and authorizing severe 
        punishments for anyone inside or outside Hong Kong found guilty of broad 
        vaguely defined crimes, effectively ending the longstanding ``one 
        country, two systems'' policy;
Whereas, in September 2020, the House Foreign Affairs Committee Minority Staff 
        Report on the origins of the COVID-19 global pandemic found that--

    (1) authorities in China harassed, detained, and disappeared 
individuals who told the truth about the CCP's handling of the COVID-19 
pandemic;

    (2) during the early outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government 
of China failed to meet an international legal requirement to inform the 
World Health Organization of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, Hubei 
Province, China;

    (3) during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government of 
China knew of the deadly human-to-human transmission capabilities of the 
virus and took steps to hide it from the public and global community; and

    (4) in February 2020, the Government of China nationalized their 
medical supply chain to stockpile personal protective equipment and stop 
foreign exports to other countries battling the COVID-19 pandemic;

Whereas the Department of State's 2020 Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP) 
        relating to the People's Republic of China--

    (1) indicates that the Trafficking in Victims Protection Act defines 
``severe forms'' of trafficking in persons as: sex trafficking in which a 
commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the 
person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age; or 
the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a 
person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion 
for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt 
bondage, or slavery;

    (2) states that Tier 3 is the most severe category for trafficking 
activity and defines Tier 3 as ``countries whose governments do not fully 
comply with the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to 
do so''; and

    (3) indicates that the Government of China has been designated in Tier 
3 by the Department of State in the TIP since 2017;

Whereas, on February 3, 2021, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) 
        reported several shocking and appalling firsthand accounts of an 
        organized system of mass rape, sexual abuse, and torture of the Uyghurs 
        in the XUAR;
Whereas, on February 11, 2021, the PRC banned the BBC for its reporting on human 
        rights abuses in XUAR;
Whereas, in October 2020, United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab stated, 
        regarding a potential boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics due to human 
        rights violations against the Uyghurs, that ``my instinct is to separate 
        sport from diplomacy and politics, but there comes a point where that 
        may not be possible'';
Whereas, in September 2020, an international coalition of human rights 
        organizations wrote to the International Olympic Committee requesting 
        the committee ``reverse its mistake in awarding Beijing the honor of 
        hosting the Winter Olympic Games in 2022'';
Whereas, in November 2020, the Australian Parliament debated a motion calling on 
        the ``Australian Government to work with the Australian Olympic 
        Committee to ensure Australia boycotts the 2022 Winter Olympics games in 
        Beijing'';
Whereas, in January 2020, the editorial board of The Washington Post opposed the 
        Government of China hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics and stated, ``the 
        world must ask whether China, slowly strangling an entire people, has 
        the moral standing to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. We think 
        not.'';
Whereas, in 1980, in H. Con. Res. 249, the House of Representatives voted 386 to 
        12, and the Senate voted 88 to 4, to urge the United States Olympic 
        Committee to propose the transfer or cancellation of the 1980 Summer 
        Olympics in Moscow; to urge the International Olympic Committee to adopt 
        such a proposal; and, if the International Olympic Committee rejected 
        the proposal, to urge the United States Olympic Committee and those of 
        other countries not to participate in the Games and to conduct 
        alternative games of their own, due to concerns over the Soviet Union's 
        invasion of Afghanistan;
Whereas since the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, the human rights record 
        and global authoritarian influence of China have severely worsened and 
        do not meet the values of Olympism; and
Whereas the Olympic Games is a celebration of international culture, a festival 
        of humanity, and is intended to be independent of political, 
        ideological, and diplomatic disagreements, but hosting the 2022 Winter 
        Olympics Games in the PRC, where organized atrocities in the XUAR are 
        ongoing, where the freedoms of Hong Kong's citizens are being trampled, 
        where the fundamental right to worship is brutally persecuted, and in 
        the wake of the ongoing global devastation from COVID-19, would be 
        immoral, unethical, and wrong: Now, therefore, be it
    Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
            (1) supports the achievements of the athletes, coaches, and 
        personnel of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee;
            (2) affirms the values and goals of Olympism;
            (3) urges the International Olympic Committee to rebid the 
        2022 Winter Olympics to a country that recognizes and respects 
        human rights;
            (4) calls on the United States Olympic & Paralympic 
        Committee to support human rights and boycott the 2022 Winter 
        Olympics if held in the People's Republic of China; and
            (5) calls on the Administration to support international 
        efforts toward a boycott of the 2022 Olympic Winter Games if 
        they are held in China.
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