Beijing 2022: US Republicans intensify calls to boycott China Olympic Games over ‘genocide’

Former Trump ally Haley says country should avoid ‘empowering China’ which ‘will lead to even greater horrors’

China continues to face heavy scrutiny by Republican Party over human rights issues in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan

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Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley looks on at the final 2020 US presidential campaign debate between former president Donald Trump and then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee last October. Photo: Reuters

Published: 5:16pm, 1 Mar 2021Updated: 5:16pm, 1 Mar 2021

The US should boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in China, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley said Sunday, becoming the latest Republican to join a growing furore over the Games and Beijing’s rights record.

“We must boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in China,” Haley, a one-time close ally of former president Donald Trump and herself a presidential hopeful, tweeted.

“It would be a terrible loss for our athletes, but that must be weighed against the genocide occurring in China and the prospect that empowering China will lead to even greater horrors down the road.”

The Games are expected to begin on February 4 next year, just six months after the delayed summer Tokyo Olympics, but preparations for both have been overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic.

A man wearing a face mask bikes past the Olympic rings at the base of the Olympic Tower in Beijing in February. Photo: AP

China is facing global scrutiny over a range of issues, notably the mass internment of Uygur Muslims in the western region of Xinjiang, which the US has said amounts to genocide.

It is also under pressure for its rights clampdown in the former British colony of Hong Kong, and for its stance toward Taiwan, the self-ruled democratic island which Beijing considers part of its territory.