As you sit down to watch the Winter Olympics in Beijing this week, remember that the Chinese government is watching too. 

Under the pervasive surveillance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), entire populations cannot take a single free step. Uyghur Muslims are facing genocide in modern-day concentration camps. Hong Kong pro-democracy protestors and newspaper editors are being silenced and thrown in jail. 

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The people of Tibet are victims to a cultural genocide as the CCP destroys their Buddhist temples and sacred cultural sites. Even well-known celebrities like Chinese tennis star Peng Shaui are forcibly disappeared after accusing party officials of abuse and sexual assault. 

Across China, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters are being subjected to gruesome torture, family separation, unjust imprisonment and mass censorship.

Soon after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Tibet became the proving ground where many of the Chinese governments’ most egregious cruelties through mass surveillance and militarization were first inflicted and refined. Just a few years later, PRC officials began using the success of their policies in Tibet to expand and begin building the infrastructure for China’s brainwashing, imprisonment and torture of the Uyghur population and other ethnic minorities which the United States and other nations have labeled as genocide. 

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Meanwhile, Hong Kong students and activists saw their freedoms brutally crushed by the CCP. Calls for human rights and the rule of law were squashed, while a new so-called National Security Law made it nearly impossible for Hong Kong citizens to participate in democracy, peacefully protest or speak freely without fear of imprisonment. 

The CCP has deployed frightening advances in surveillance technology across China that the government can utilize to control, silence and oppress its population.

Olga Fatkulina and Vadim Shipachyov, of the Russian Olympic Committee, carry a flag into the stadium during the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Friday, Feb. 4, 2022, in Beijing.
(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

But this type of surveillance and oppression is not only aimed at minority communities. The entire Chinese population are also targets, unable to voice their true feelings or even learn the full truth about the Chinese government’s policies, including the brutal use of slave labor in Xinjiang. 

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However, with our access to free news and information, those outside of China have no excuse for pleading ignorance. Many Western and American companies have been complicit in—and actively profited from—forced labor in Xinjiang, and some are even continuing to brazenly profit from the Olympics despite grave human rights concerns and genocide determinations. 

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U.S. companies have lined up to sponsor the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing and have chosen to turn a blind eye and continue funding a regime that actively silences, enslaves and tortures its own people. 

The House and Senate recently came together to pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which is a step in the right direction. But there’s more to be done. 

Last year I introduced the bipartisan Uyghur Policy Act to create a multilateral diplomatic strategy to counter the CCP’s genocide in Xinjiang and have supported other important initiatives to protect basic human rights in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet. 

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We must wake up and realize that the CCP has fully committed to leveraging oppression, torture and genocide to further its geopolitical ambitions and economic prospects. We cannot continue to be complicit and must deal with the PRC government we have, not the one we want. 

The International Olympic Committee ignored requests to deny the PRC the privilege of hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics. I am glad the Biden administration issued a diplomatic boycott and will continue to closely monitor their actions. While we cannot move the games, we must speak out in defense of human rights and democratic freedoms during and after the Olympic Games.

Athletes from Russian Olympic Committee arrive during the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Friday, Feb. 4, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

As the world tunes into the Olympic Games to watch our world’s best athletes compete, we all know well that Beijing will be using their global platform to showcase their propaganda. 

Athletes have been training their whole lives and I don’t think they should be punished. However, I hope they do speak out in support of human rights for the people of their host country, and we must ensure they are protected. 

I look forward to seeing American athletes compete vigilantly, win the gold and stand proudly on the podium with our stars and stripes shining and Star Bangled Banner playing for the world to see our national message of freedom, democracy and opportunity.

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While the CCP spouts propaganda, each of us must come together in strong support of those who are trapped under their control in the years to come through congressional action and corporate responsibility and morality.

I will continue to stand in fierce opposition to the CCP’s human rights violations and ensure that the atrocities committed across the world result in steep financial and political costs for the Xi regime. Our nation’s future economic and national security depends on it.

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