(PresidentialInsider.com)- Now that President Joe Biden has firmly ruled out the possibility of withdrawing American athletes from the Beijing Winter Olympics this year, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China is calling for a full United Nations report and investigation into the persecution of Uyghur Muslims in the country before the event takes place.
The bipartisan group of American legislators on the CECC board has called on the human rights office of the United Nations to publish its full assessment and any results of investigations into the victimization and imprisonment of Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps in the Xinjiang region of China.
Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley and Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern, the chair and co-chair of the commission, urged the United Nations to release the information as a “global service.” They said that the move would “reaffirm the fact that no country is beyond scrutiny or above international law.”
Over 1 million members of the Uyghur ethnic group in China are believed to be forced to live in concentration camps where they are often used as slave labor and many women and children are sexually abused by guards. The claims have been strongly denied by the Chinese Communist Party but several survivors of the camps have spoken out about the abuse they received while forced to live there.
The Winter Olympic Games are expected to begin on February 4, and while the United States and a host of other Western countries have committed to diplomatic boycotts – whereby diplomats and legislators will not attend the games – the athletes will go ahead and compete anyway.
The move is controversial for many reasons – not just because it legitimizes the horrific treatment of these ethnic minorities by China. It’s also a major national security risk.
So much of a national security risk, in fact, that the British Olympics board has advised athletes not to take their own cell phones to China and has offered training on how to avoid their personal information being obtained by the Chinese government.
If the report is released by the United Nations before the games begin, will President Joe Biden even care at this point?
