US Sen. Rick Scott Calls on Australian PM to Support Relocating Winter Olympics

A journalist takes pictures of a display at the exhibition center for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics in Yaqing district on in Beijing, China, on Feb. 5, 2021. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

U.S. Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) has written to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison encouraging him to join the senator’s push for the Winter Olympic Games to be relocated away from China over its human rights violations.

The U.S. senator says he has also written to U.S. President Joe Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to support the campaign.

Scott said he was not calling for a boycott of the Winter Olympic Games as it would only “hurt athletes” who had trained all their lives for the event. Instead, he believed relocating the Games would be “the right course of action.”

“The Olympic Games give the world’s best athletes a chance to represent their countries and unite our nations,” Scott wrote in the letter.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 23, 2021. (Erin Scott/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

“However, this cannot be achieved if we ignore the grotesque abuses of Communist China and allow the games to be hosted in Beijing, putting the safety of all athletes and attendees at risk,” he added.

“Governments and international organizations have the ability and responsibility to address human rights concerns and calling on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to move the 2022 Olympics Games out of Beijing is the right course of action,” he said.

Scott also thanked the Australian prime minister for his efforts in pushing for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, in April last year. That call sparked a sharp response from the Chinese Ambassador in Canberra and an eight-month-long campaign of what U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called Beijing’s “blatant economic coercion” of Australia.

“Communist China has despicably and vindictively tried to bully you and your people through economics restrictions and slander,” Scott wrote. “I urge you not let up or give into these childish tactics.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison during a press conference at Parliament House on March 17, 2021, in Canberra, Australia. Sam Mooy/Getty Images)

The U.S. senator, along with six of his colleagues, have also introduced a resolution to the U.S. Senate calling for the Games to be relocated.

Beijing won hosting rights for the 2022 edition of the Winter Games in 2015, beating out Almaty, Kazakhstan.

The IOC has stood by its decision to hand Beijing the Games in the face of increased criticism, saying the hosting of the event had little to do with the political structure of a country’s government.

“In our fragile world, the power of sport to bring the whole world together, despite all the existing differences, gives us all hope for a better future,” an IOC spokesperson previously told The Epoch Times.

An exhibition centre for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing on Feb. 5, 2021. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

“Awarding the Olympic Games to a National Olympic Committee (NOC) does not mean that the IOC agrees with the political structure, social circumstances or human rights standards in its country,” he added.

However, Gordan Chang, China expert and author of “The Coming Collapse of China,” said the IOC had barred South Africa from participating in the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo because of its apartheid policies.

Apartheid policies meant only white South Africans could participate in the Games.

“We do not need another 1936 Olympics,” Chang added, referring to when Nazi Germany hosted the Games. “We don’t need another 2008 Olympics [in Beijing], which basically promoted totalitarianism with those ghastly displays. We do not need to do this again.”

Victoria Kelly-Clark contributed to this report.