The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today urged all Americans to contact U.S.-based corporations advertising during the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics and urge them to speak out against the ongoing genocide targeting China’s Uyghur Muslim minority.
[NOTE: The Olympics are set to begin on Feb. 4. CAIR welcomed a U.S. diplomatic boycott of the games over human rights concerns.]
CAIR is urging members of the public to contact Coca-Cola, Intel, Airbnb, Procter & Gamble, and Visa and other companies that have chosen to advertise during the Olympics despite the fact that China is the host to publicly express their support of human rights for all, including Uyghurs experiencing genocide at the hands of the Chinese government. Those same advertisers were questioned last July by the Congressional Executive Committee on China about their role in the Beijing Olympics.
“If American corporations are going to advertise during the Beijing-hosted Olympics as if it’s business as usual, those same companies should at least make it clear that they reject and condemn human rights violations, including China’s ongoing genocide of Uyghur Muslims,” said CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell.
Mitchell noted that the Olympic Charter states in part that sport should preserve “human dignity” and adds that, “The enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in this Olympic Charter shall be secured without discrimination of any kind.”
He said CAIR last week supported a call by U.S. lawmakers for the U.N. to release a report on Xinjiang Province, where the Chinese government is conducting a genocide against Uyghur Muslims and other Turkic minorities.
CAIR also called on foreign athletes participating in the Beijing Olympics to defy China’s announced ban on political expression and speak out against that nation’s genocide targeting the Uyghur Muslim minority.
Washington, D.C., based CAIR condemned remarks by Chamath Palihapitiya, a minority owner of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, saying “nobody cares what’s happening to the Uyghurs.”
