The United States Boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games

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1. The US has announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in China. Athletes will still be attending and have US full support. The White House press secretary stated that the “the US would not contribute to the fanfare of the Olympics” US government did not feel "it was the right step to penalise athletes who had been training for this moment", but that not sending an official US delegation to the 2022 Games "could send a clear message".
2. The US message is focused around human rights abuses and in particular the US accused China of repression of the Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities living mostly in the autonomous region of Xinjiang.
3. In the US, the diplomatic boycott was praised by both Democratic and Republican lawmakers.
4. Beijing 2022 will be the first time a major city has hosted a summer and a winter Olympics Games and the Chinese government also want to get their own political messages across.
5. The US politicians themselves have called it a half measure not a full boycott.
6. So this is not a question of keep politics out of sport , you can’t stop the politicization of sport and I am not sure you want to - sport has always been political and in being so it has done many good things – But what this does is amplify is the fact sport is a great pillar of connectivity , on a scale that few other areas of public life offer and therefore why would you not use it to get messages across – it is an invaluable space that does a lot of good but also because of its scale and reach is used to carry all sorts of messages and this is just another example of that.