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.
<all>
Introduced in House
Introduced in House
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.
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.
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