Monmouth County Congressman Boycotts Beijing Winter Olympics

MONMOUTH COUNTY, NJ — The U.S. congressman who represents a large chunk of Monmouth and Ocean counties said he will be boycotting this year's winter Olympics, scheduled to begin Friday in Beijing.

Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ 4) said he is boycotting the Olympics because they are hosted by the Chinese Communist Party. In his reasons for boycotting, Smith did not include coronavirus, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Instead, he said it was mainly because of the Chinese Communist Party's treatment of ethnic minority groups, such as the Uyghur Muslims.

Last Thursday, Smith led a protest outside the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., where he called the 2022 winter games "the genocide Olympics."

"These are (Chinese president) Xi Jinping’s Genocide Games, held in a nation that places its own people in concentration camps, forcing ethnic Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Kirghiz to labor in slavery," said Smith.

Smith also condemned the Chinese Communist government for its harsh treatment of dissidents or those who criticize the government, and its action in Hong Kong.

"Behind those walls, are representatives of one of the most repressive regimes on the face of the earth, that of Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping," said Smith outside the Chinese embassy last Thursday. "Next week, we will see the ideals of the Olympics tarnished, trashed and torn."

Read: All The New Jersey Athletes Competing In The Beijing Olympics

In December, the Biden administration announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, saying it would be sending no diplomats to the games. U.S. athletes, however, are free to compete.

However, Smith said Biden's diplomatic boycott is "an exceedingly weak gesture in response to a genocidal regime," and that it does not go far enough.

"The athletes on Team USA have our full support. We will be behind them 100 percent as we cheer them on from home," said White House media spokeswoman Jen Psaki in this Dec. 6 statement. "We will not be contributing to the fanfare of the Games ... given the PRC’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses."

Smith either wants the Olympics moved or thinks American athletes should not be allowed to compete in the games, said a spokesman for his office.

Also at Thursday's protest, Smith called out Coca-Cola for sponsoring the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, NBC for broadcasting the games and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for allowing China to host.

"We must call out the IOC. The IOC has not stood with the oppressed; they have stood with the oppressor," said Smith. "And Coca-Cola virtue signals when it comes to protesting common-sense laws designed to curb voter fraud in Georgia, but then turns a blind eye to the harvesting of organs of Uyghurs and Falun Gong practitioners. We must call out NBC, which will broadcast the Genocide Games but refuses to say whether it will cover those athletes who raise their voices in protest to the vile human rights abuses of Xi Jinping and the Communist Party."

The United Nations has previously said it is investigating unverified reports of organ harvesting in China, reported by Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians in Chinese prisons.

"And we must call out those members of corporate America, like billionaire co-owner of the Golden State Warriors Chamath Palihapitiya, who callously proclaimed 'no one cares' about the genocide against the predominantly-Muslim Uyghurs," said Smith.

Warriors owner Palihapitiya made those remarks in a podcast in January and he has since apologized.

"Well, we care about the Uyghurs, and we also care about the Tibetans, and Christians and Falun Gong practitioners who are treated with unspeakable cruelty and persecuted for their religious beliefs," said Smith.

Smith is a Republican who has represented New Jersey's Fourth Congressional District since 1980. He is one of two Republican Congress representatives left in New Jersey, the other being South Jersey Congressman Jeff Van Drew.

The Fourth Congressional District covers nearly all of Monmouth County, including towns such as Holmdel, part of Middletown, Colts Neck, Rumson, Manalapan, Freehold, Red Bank and Wall Township. The Fourth District also reaches into Jackson and Lakewood in Ocean County and Hamilton and Robbinsville in Mercer County.

Among the people who also spoke at last week's protest included a Chinese lawyer who was once imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party, and who said he was denied a humanitarian request to allow him out of jail to visit his wife she was dying of cancer.

A woman named Mihrigul Tursun also spoke; she is the same woman who at this 2018 congressional hearing co-chaired by Smith recounted her ordeal of torture, sexual abuse and detention in one of China’s ‘mass internment camps’ in Xinjiang.

Turnsun says she was tortured for being an ethnic Uyghur and a Muslim in China.

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