Former US Olympic Skier Says Beijing Games Will Be Remembered By Ploy ‘To Bolster Two Different Authoritarian Governments’

An ex-U.S. Olympic skier criticized the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, arguing that this year’s event will be remembered as a way “to bolster two different authoritarian governments,” the Associated Press reported.

“The IOC definitely made the wrong choice in sending the games to Beijing,” former U.S. Olympic skier Noah Hoffman told the AP, saying that the games will be remembered as a way to signal support for authoritarian governments.

“We’re going to remember the way that these games were used to bolster two different authoritarian governments,” Hoffman said.

Numerous groups have criticized the IOC’s decision to send the 2022 Winter Olympics to Beijing amid growing criticism of China’s ongoing human rights abuses of Uyghur Muslims. The Chinese government has forced the Uyghurs into labor camps, tortured the group and harvested some of their organs in an ethnic cleansing project, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported.

The White House announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics, declining to send any diplomatic or official representation to the games in response to China’s human rights abuses, the DCNF reported.