Florida’s Republican Senator Rick Scott says that NBC should demand that the International Olympic Committee remove the 2022 Olympic Games from China over its human rights abuse outrages, especially its treatment of its Uyghur Muslim minority.
“NBC’s own reporting has detailed the horrors faced by Uyghurs in Xinjiang and the genocide being committed against them by the government of Communist China,” the Senator said in a statement. “Yet this American network continues to turn a blind eye to Communist China’s atrocities when it comes to allowing Beijing to host the 2022 Olympic Games.”
The Senator’s request came in a May 19 letter he sent to NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell and NBC Olympics President Gary Zenkel.
Unlike Hollywood and the entertainment industry’s constant attack on American states for laws the left doesn’t like, NBC waved off Scott’s concerns about China’s human rights violations and insisted that politicians are the better people to handle the issue.
“NBCUniversal has no role in the selection of cities that host this extraordinary gathering of the world,” NBC’s Head of Federal Government Affairs Phil Tahtakran exclaimed in response to the Senator. “As the U.S. media rights holder of the Olympics, our only role is to broadcast the Olympic and Paralympic Games to a U.S. audience.”
Indeed, Tahtakran insisted that NBC would hurt only Americans if it stirred trouble with the Olympics.
Still, Scott noted that refusing to air the Olympics in protest over China’s human rights record would be in keeping with the network’s refusal to air the next Golden Globes show because the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is not “diverse” enough.
“If NBC is willing to cancel the Golden Globes to support racial diversity, why can’t they take a stand for human rights and demand the relocation of the 2022 games?” Scott said rightly, pointing out that China’s human rights abuses are many times more egregious than a not-woke-enough Golden Globes.
Senator Scott, who is urging that the games be moved to another nation, joins others who want an outright boycott. In February, 180 human rights groups urged a global boycott of the games because of China’s horrendous human rights abuses. And in March, a group of Uyghurs filed a request with the IOC to move the games out of China.
The IOC, though, has refused all such requests. On top of that, the Department of State has closed the door on the U.S. having any part in boycotts of the games.
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