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Boycott the Chinese Olympics
Apr. 15th, 2021 12:32 amI am not a sports fan, and do not typically read the Sports section, but I have acquired the habit of looking at the Washington Post’s Sports section to see whether there’s anything by Sally Jenkins. I’m not so much interested in her actual sports coverage as in her reportage and fulminations about corruption in the NCAA, U.S. Gymnastics, the International Olympic Committee, and other such organizations. On Wednesday, her target was Communist China and the 2022 Winter Games, which she wants free countries to boycott. China, of course, is both domestically authoritarian, and especially brutal to the Uyghurs, and also engaged in trying to export its surveillance technology and its power to gag critics.
Ms. Jenkins writes, “They should break the IOC’s autocratic handshake and organize a replacement Winter Games in Canada. There would be nothing feckless about such an act. On the contrary, it would be an act of powerful reclamation and self-determination.”
I am inclined to agree. We could send a message that countries which carry tyranny and abuse of their own people too far are not fit to host international events, and that we are confident in our own values, and willing to proclaim them. I remember hearing of dissidents and prisoners in the Soviet Union being cheered up by Ronald Reagan’s forthright language; decades from now, we may learn that similar language and corresponding deeds of ours helped console and strengthen the victims of the Chinese Communist regime, and help it to lose the Mandate of Heaven.
Ms. Jenkins writes, “They should break the IOC’s autocratic handshake and organize a replacement Winter Games in Canada. There would be nothing feckless about such an act. On the contrary, it would be an act of powerful reclamation and self-determination.”
I am inclined to agree. We could send a message that countries which carry tyranny and abuse of their own people too far are not fit to host international events, and that we are confident in our own values, and willing to proclaim them. I remember hearing of dissidents and prisoners in the Soviet Union being cheered up by Ronald Reagan’s forthright language; decades from now, we may learn that similar language and corresponding deeds of ours helped console and strengthen the victims of the Chinese Communist regime, and help it to lose the Mandate of Heaven.
