Amendment No. 2103

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise to support amendment No. 2103, which addresses a very important issue in the world, which is the issue of governments that undertake to destroy populations, either in other countries or within their own country; that is, to commit genocide.

Now, this topic comes up because China is committing genocide against its own Uighur population--a million Uighurs who are enslaved, who are trapped, who are assaulted in every possible way by the official authorities operating out of Beijing.

The finding of genocide is one that the State Department takes very seriously. It involves long investigations, collection of evidence, analysis. It is not something to say lightly. But we now have two Secretaries of State who have led our State Department through this process and reached the same conclusion--Secretary Pompeo, under President Trump, and Secretary Blinken, under President Biden. And both find that this is, in fact, genocide.

Now, at this very moment, athletes are preparing to compete in the Olympic Games in China, and I find it horrific that the prestige of the Games is going to be carried on for a country that is committing genocide.

Now, we have a Commission that works on human rights issues, known as the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and it hauls a whole team of experts who work to analyze human rights issues. This commission, which is bipartisan and bicameral and includes executive branch appointees, when they are actually appointed, has held a hearing.

At that hearing, various experts came and testified on what China is doing. It reinforced what the Secretary of State under our former President and the Secretary of State under our current President found: Genocide is being conducted by the government in China against the Uighur population

And that is not all China is doing. There are other afflicted groups that it is assaulting. In addition, it has proceeded to start stripping the political rights of the people of Hong Kong.

It is very much in the news. We have seen the citizens protesting in the streets, hundreds of thousands, saying: China, honor the commitment you made when Britain transferred Hong Kong back under a 50-year agreement to China.

And China has not honored that agreement.

Now, China, when it was awarded the Games back in 2015 to be held in 2022--7 years in advance--made human rights promises to the International Olympic Committee--promises that have not been upheld. In fact, during those years, China has become an even worse violator of human rights in Hong Kong, in Xinjiang, and in other ethnic areas, including Tibet.

So we have echoes of 1936--the year the summer Olympics were held in Germany and Hitler was in charge. He used those Olympic Games to shine prestige on his country and to essentially help distract enormously from his already horrific actions against Jewish Germans and other groups within Germany.

So how is it here, nearly a century later, that, again, the Olympics are going to be used to shine a little bit of light and a lot of prestige on a country engaged in genocide?

I want to compliment my colleague Senator Romney of Utah. He has placed in the underlying bill, as it came out of the Foreign Relations Committee, a provision that says: When the Olympics are held, there should be a diplomatic boycott to protest and draw attention to this egregious situation. I hope, also, that the sponsors of those games will start to withdraw their sponsorships.

Now, my friend and colleague Senator Romney is an expert on the Olympic Games because he organized the Olympic Games in Utah. Nobody in America probably knows more about what it takes to prepare for them. And it is not, at this moment, possible for the structure that has been established to host the athletes to be redone and to pivot for just next year, which I find unfortunate, but I understand the point.

So let's do this together. Let's send a strong message to the Olympic Committee, the IOC, that never again should they allow a country to host the Olympic Games that is engaged in genocide. This should be a message that every American can say together--that never should a country be given the prestige of hosting the games when they are committing genocide. Never should a country be able to host the games when it is something like what China is doing to the Uighur population--enslaving them, stripping them of their dignity, their autonomy, their culture, controlling them in every way, enslaving them. Never again should the Games be able to be hosted by a country like China that is restricting the political rights of Hong Kong--what China is doing, stripping the freedom of speech, stripping the freedom of assembly, and breaking the deal that it signed when the deal was struck with Britain for the return of Hong Kong.

So this amendment, cosponsored by Senator Rubio, who is the cochair in the Senate of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China; cosponsored by Senator Romney, who knows more about the Olympic Games than anybody else in this country; cosponsored by Senator Young, who has been a terrific champion against the abuse of citizens in Yemen and the abuse of citizens in Burma--let's adopt this amendment as part of this package while we are on the topic of China, while we are on the topic of trade.

Let's not let this moment bypass us without saying with a unified voice that this is wrong, and that the Olympics, which were designed to lift up the human spirit, to celebrate the best of competition, to have kind of the thrills and the agonies of victory and defeat--that never should the Games, the focal point of world attention, be hosted by a country that is committing genocide.

Thank you.

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