Criticism of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) warning to U.S. athletes taking part in the Winter Olympics in Beijing not to speak about the Communist Chinese human rights abuses was expressed by the Rev. Al Sharpton.
Pelosi said that athletes should “not risk incurring the anger of the Chinese government.”
The Western Journal reported:
On Thursday, while Pelosi made it clear that she believes the U.S. must confront China’s egregious human rights abuses and criticized the International Olympic Committee for giving Beijing the chance to host the Games, she also said athletes should “not risk incurring the anger of the Chinese government.”
These comments, despite being accompanied by the acknowledgment that the U.S. has an “urgent moral duty to shine a bright light” on the communist regime’s abuses, nonetheless attracted criticism.
“I respectfully disagree with the speaker here — and I usually am supportive of her — because you cannot normalize what they’re doing in China,” Sharpton said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday. “To go there and act like all is well is to normalize some very brutal behavior.”
“We need to let China know, ‘You live in a world that human rights is non-negotiable,’” Sharpton said.
The controversial games have been dubbed the Genocide Olympics as they unfold in a country where a million people who are Muslim or belong to other religious minorities are being held in concentration camps. According to a poll, viewership of the games could be the lowest recorded, as 40 percent of respondents said they will not watch the games because the Communist Chinese Party is hosting them.
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