WASHINGTON, D.C. – In case you missed it, Senator Rick Scott wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post on how the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has the opportunity to stand up for its values and human rights around the globe by moving the 2022 Olympic Games out of Communist China.

In the op-ed, Senator Rick Scott wrote, “Fifty-six years ago, the International Olympic Committee took a historic step: It stood up to the government of South Africa and its racist apartheid system and banned the country from participation in the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games.

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The IOC should take a similar step now, and move the 2022 Games out of Beijing. In a letter to IOC President Thomas Bach last October, I outlined the Chinese Communist Party’s numerous human rights abuses, including attacks on free speech, detention of international journalists, the imprisonment of more than 1 million Uighurs (an ethnic and religious minority in Western China), the sinister surveillance of citizens and tyrannical actions against citizens of Hong Kong.

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The IOC charter states, “The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” And the “host city contract” the IOC adopted in 2017 requires that hosts “protect and respect human rights.” Unfortunately (and not so coincidentally), the contract does not take effect until after the 2022 Beijing Games.

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The IOC has a chance to once again do the right thing by moving the 2022 Games out of Beijing. The actions of Xi and the Chinese Communist Party fly in the face of Olympic values and universally held ideals of basic human dignity.

For the hundreds of millions who will watch the Games, we must again lead by example and refuse to give Communist China — a country that is running concentration camps and eliminating human rights for its people — a platform to whitewash its crimes.”

Read the full op-ed in the Washington Post HERE.

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