China on Wednesday said the US House speaker Nancy Pelosi was “full of lies” after she called for a “diplomatic boycott” of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics over human rights abuses.
US lawmakers are getting increasingly vocal about an Olympic boycott and have lashed out at American firms, arguing their silence about what the state department has termed “a genocide of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in China was abetting the Chinese government”.
“What I propose - and join those who are proposing - is a diplomatic boycott,” Pelosi said, in which “lead countries of the world withhold their attendance at the Olympics”.
Pelosi’s comments drew a strong response from China, which denies ill-treating Muslim minorities and has claimed that camps in Xinjiang, where an unknown number have been held, are vocational training centres, meant to deradicalise and train them for employment.
“Some US individuals’ remarks are full of lies and disinformation,” foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Wednesday.
“US politicians should stop using the Olympic movement to play despicable political games,” Zhao said. “Some people in the US hype themselves up as moral authority. I don’t know where they get the nerve to say so.”
{{/usCountry}}“US politicians should stop using the Olympic movement to play despicable political games,” Zhao said. “Some people in the US hype themselves up as moral authority. I don’t know where they get the nerve to say so.”
{{/usCountry}}Zhao said that the US’ intention of using human rights issues is to divert attention from its own historical and present human rights crimes, disclose the US’ motive of containing China’s development under the guise of so-called human rights issues, and expose the hypocrisy of the so-called democracy and human rights of the US.
CHINA TARGETS US OVER TAIWAN STRAIT
Besides strongly criticising Pelosi’s statement, Beijing also accused Washington of threatening the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait after a US warship sailed through the sensitive waterway that separates Taiwan from China.
The US Navy’s 7th Fleet said the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Curtis Wilbur conducted a “routine Taiwan Strait transit” on Tuesday in accordance with international law. “The ship’s transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the US commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. The United States military will continue to fly, sail, and operate anywhere international law allows,” the US navy said.
A spokesperson for China’s Eastern Theatre Command expressed strong opposition and condemned the move, which comes amid heightened tensions between the two powers.
The spokesperson, Colonel Zhang Chunhui said that by sending the guided missile destroyer USS Curtis Wilbur through the Taiwan Strait and hyping the event publicly, the US sent the wrong signals to “Taiwan independence” forces; Beijing claims the self-ruled democracy as a breakaway region.
Chunhui said the passage of the US warship deliberately disturbed and damaged the regional situation and harmed peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.