NBCUniversal should drop its broadcast of the Beijing Winter Olympics that is just two months away and instead turn the limelight toward the regime’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, U.S. lawmakers told the broadcaster.
“The nearly one billion dollars that NBCUniversal and its affiliates have invested in these Games means the organization bears the responsibility in addressing the impact of China’s human rights abuses,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.), chair and co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China, wrote in a Dec. 16 letter to NBCUniversal’s CEO Jeff Shell.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) derived 73 percent of its past four years’ revenue from selling broadcasting rights. About 40 percent of that income came from NBC alone.
That the Olympic sponsors have widely endorsed the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, has created a responsibility for these companies to address the human rights impact of their products and services, the lawmakers said in the letter.
“Athletes, support staff, and members of the media will be present in a country where an active genocide is taking place, and in adhering with the charter of the Games to foster ‘respect for universal and fundamental ethical principles,’ NBCUniversal must think about what that means for those participating in Beijing and Chinese citizens alike,” the letter stated.
The Epoch Times has reached out to NBCUniversal for comments.
At a congressional hearing in July, top executives from Coca-Cola, Airbnb, Procter & Gamble, and Visa, all four American Olympics sponsors that have declared support for human rights globally, would not clarify whether they would back moving the Olympics to a different country or postponing the Games.
Despite Beijing vouching for fundamental freedoms in China while hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics, China’s human rights records have continued to sink, with the regime clamping down on democracy in Hong Kong, suppressing faith groups and dissidents with the aid of high-tech surveillance, and carrying out a genocidal campaign against Uyghur groups.
The human rights watchdog Freedom House gave China a score of 9 out of 100 in its latest Freedom in the World report, labeling the regime “world’s most populous dictatorship.”
The United States, joined by allies such as Australia, Canada, Japan, and the U.K., have announced they would not send official delegations to the Beijing Olympics in protest against the regime’s atrocities in Xinjiang.
Pressure has been growing for NBC to drop the broadcast deal as the Games date draws near.
In June, a coalition of 200 human rights groups collectively appealed to NBCUniversal to take the step to avoid legitimizing abuses and “promoting the ‘Genocide Games.’”
Earlier in the month, Tibetan and Hong Kong activists also staged a protest outside NBC headquarters in Rockefeller Center in New York marking the two-month countdown of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
The activists cited Beijing’s censorship of Chinese Olympian Peng Shuai after she made sexual assault allegations against a former senior Chinese official.
