Title: Urging the United States Olympic Committee, the International Olympic Committee, and the Olympic Committees of other countries to take certain actions with respect to the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.
Policy area: International Affairs

Summary:
This resolution urges the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to transfer the 2022 Winter Olympic Games to a site outside of China and urges the United States and other countries to withdraw from the games if the IOC does not take this action. The resolution also urges recognition and celebration of the 2022 U.S. Winter Olympic athletes, coaches, trainers, and staff.

[Congressional Bills 117th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 129 Introduced in House (IH)]

<DOC>






117th CONGRESS
   1st Session
H. RES. 129

 Urging the United States Olympic Committee, the International Olympic 
   Committee, and the Olympic Committees of other countries to take 
     certain actions with respect to the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           February 15, 2021

Mr. Waltz 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 the United States Olympic Committee, the International Olympic 
   Committee, and the Olympic Committees of other countries to take 
     certain actions with respect to the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.

Whereas the annual report of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China for 
        2020 indicates--

    (1) the People's Republic of China (PRC) 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 Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (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 PRC 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, on September 29, 2020, the United States House of Representatives China 
        Task Force issued its final report, which found that--

    (1) right now, upwards of a million Uyghurs and other religious and 
ethnic minorities in the PRC are being held against their will in 
concentration camps in the XUAR;

    (2) CCP authorities are tearing families apart, subjecting targeted 
ethnic groups to forced abortion, forced sterilization, and involuntary 
birth control, as well as other forms of heinous abuse and indoctrination; 
and

    (3) these concentration camps are being used as a feeder system for 
forced labor not only in Xinjiang, but throughout the PRC economy, and the 
Australian Strategic Policy Institute found in 2020 that the supply chains 
of at least 82 global brands are using forced Uyghur labor;

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 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 PRC has been designated in Tier 3 by the 
Department of State in the TIP since 2017;

Whereas, on January 19, 2021, the former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo 
        determined that the PRC, 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 he determined that 
        the genocide is ongoing, and that we are witnessing the systematic 
        attempt to destroy Uyghurs by the Chinese party-state;
Whereas, on January 19, 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken in his testimony 
        before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations agreed with Secretary 
        Pompeo's determination when stating, ``Forcing men, women, and children 
        into concentration camps, trying to in effect reeducate them to be 
        adherents to the Chinese Communist Party--all of that speaks to an 
        effort to commit genocide'';
Whereas, on September 15, 2020, 23 human rights groups signed an open letter of 
        concern to governments on crimes against humanity and genocide against 
        Uyghurs in China, and the letter states, ``We, the undersigned human 
        rights and genocide prevention organizations, and individual 
        practitioners, are deeply concerned over mounting evidence that Chinese 
        government policies targeting Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim-majority 
        peoples in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China strongly 
        suggests that crimes against humanity and genocide are taking place'';
Whereas, on September 21, 2020, the House of Representatives staff on the 
        Foreign Affairs Committee released a report titled, ``The Origins of the 
        COVID-19 Global Pandemic, Including the Roles of the Chinese Communist 
        Party and the World Health Organization'', that indicates--

    (1) sometime in early to mid-November 2019, a novel coronavirus first 
infected humans in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province in the central 
region of the PRC;

    (2) failure of the CCP to notify the World Health Organization (WHO) 
about the outbreak of a novel disease within China's borders;

    (3) the repeated failure of the CCP to notify the WHO of cases meeting 
the WHO definition of SARS;

    (4) the CCP's shuttering of the Shanghai lab that published the SARS-
CoV-2 genome online;

    (5) the lack of new case announcements during CCP political meetings 
between January 6, 2020, and January 17, 2020;

    (6) the suppression of reports from medical doctors within the PRC 
providing evidence of human-to-human transmission; and

    (7) 6 days of undisclosed response during January, during which General 
Secretary Xi Jinping and other senior CCP officials kept secret their 
knowledge that human-to-human transmission was occurring and that a 
pandemic was likely;

Whereas the PRC and CCP are violating international human rights laws and norms, 
        including--

    (1) the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of 
Racial Discrimination;

    (2) the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or 
Degrading Treatment or Punishment;

    (3) the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; and

    (4) the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; 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. However, 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 urges--
            (1) recognition, celebration, and support for the 
        commitment, dedication, and patriotism of the 2022 United 
        States Winter Olympics Team athletes, coaches, trainers, and 
        staff;
            (2) that the United States Olympic Committee propose the 
        transfer of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games to a site other than 
        within the People's Republic of China;
            (3) that the International Olympic Committee should 
        transfer the 2022 Winter Olympic Games to a site other than 
        within the People's Republic of China;
            (4) that, if the International Olympic Committee rejects 
        such a proposal, the United States Olympic Committee and the 
        Olympic Committees of other countries should withdraw from the 
        2022 Winter Olympic Games; and
            (5) that the Secretary of State is requested to transmit a 
        copy of this resolution to the government of each country that 
        is represented on the International Olympic Committee.
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