THE C.C.P.’S GENOCIDE and OTHER CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY REQUIRE MATERIAL PENALTIES–NOT BOGUS ONES
The Winter Olympics Must Be Moved From Beijing or Really Boycotted
By announcing a “Diplomatic Boycott,” the Biden administration on December 6th implicitly acknowledged being bound by the Genocide Convention to penalize the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for the crimes against humanity that it is perpetrating against ethnic and religious minorities in East Turkistan (Xinjiang) and others elsewhere in China. Yet, the extent of the punishment it has decided to mete out in response to that treaty obligation – to say nothing of its moral responsibility in the face of such human rights abuses as mass incarceration, slave labor, systematic rape, forced abortions and sterilizations, torture and wholesale murder – can only be characterized as pathetic and utterly inadequate.
The Committee on the Present Danger: China (CPDC), Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, and their Stop the Genocide Games Task Force consider the so-called “diplomatic boycott” of the Olympic Games in February to be a necessary, but grossly insufficient, response to a Chinese regime guilty of the most egregious and murderous oppression in world history. Inevitably, such a response will only embolden the CCP to further – and probably far more devastating– criminal misconduct, both at home and abroad.
Reggie Littlejohn, President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers and Co-Chairman of the Stop the Genocide Games Task Force, noted following the announcement of a diplomatic boycott:
“The 2022 Olympics in Beijing look ominously similar to the 1936 Games held in Berlin, Germany. Like in 1936, we are confronting another totalitarian regime actively engaging in genocide. We must not make the mistake again of allowing a genocidal regime to glory in hosting the world’s most prestigious international event. Indeed, as a signatory of the Genocide Convention of 1948, the United States cannot allow this to happen.
“Specifically, Article 1 of the Genocide Convention states, ‘The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.’ As a Contracting Party, the United States has committed itself to “prevent and punish” those committing genocide. So have the other signatories the world over. Relocation of the ‘Genocide Games’ and, failing that, their comprehensive boycott should be just the beginning of this punishment.”
Biden’s boycott is bogus because the CCP had already disinvited the world to the Games. In October, at the request of China’s Olympic Committee, “Beijing 22,” the International Olympic Committee banned international spectators from attending the Genocide Games. Only people living in China — only people under the CCP’s surveillance and control — will be allowed to attend the Games. According to a report in the Washington Post this week, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official, Zhao Lijian, stated, “U.S. politicians keep hyping a ‘diplomatic boycott’ without even being invited to the Games.”
If the United States government—now joined by Canada, the U.K. and Australia—is recognizing, however inadequately, its obligation to punish genocide and the unacceptability of Communist China’s other “egregious human rights abuses,” what about the corporate sponsors, who stand to profit from their support of the “Genocide Games,” and who have yet to decline to reward the CCP for perpetrating such horrors? Are they indifferent to these crimes and willing to be seen as tolerating, if not tacitly endorsing, them?
Should the U.S. and other Olympians need further reasons to join the boycott, those athletes should reflect on the certitude that they will be at risk of one or more of the following: health consequences of China’s lingering Covid and/or environmental predations; physical surveillance and possible harm, if not incarceration, at the whim of the Chinese government; and the theft of their DNA, which will almost certainly be put in the service of the CCP’s bioengineering of super-humans/warriors and biological weapons tailored to attack certain ethnicities.
The Committee on the Present Danger: China and its Stop the Genocide Games Task Force believe that the Chinese Communist Party must be deemed ineligible to host what is arguably the most prestigious international event on earth – the Olympic Games. Moving the Games at this point would require delaying them, perhaps for a year. But, if the Tokyo Games were delayed a year because of Covid, surely the 2022 Games can be delayed a year because of genocide.
The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) should immediately call for the Games to be moved to a new host nation. If the International Olympic Committee refuses to move the Games, the USOPC should join a real and comprehensive boycott, as should the Olympic committees of other nations, and athletes, staff members and sponsors the world over.
In addition, the U.S. government should take a further, long-overdue step: It should designate the CCP as what it is: a Transnational Criminal Organization, thereby putting on notice those who do business with or otherwise abet its odious behavior, and will, therefore, be treated as accomplices to it.
Such steps would actually impose tangible costs– punishing the Chinese Communist Party, as we are obliged to do by treaty, and serving notice on others that they cannot engage in genocide or other egregious crimes against humanity with impunity.
Those who agree are encouraged to sign the Stop the Genocide Games petition at https://genocidegames.org/petition/.
