Mike Pompeo slams China's 'Genocide Olympics,' urges American athletes to boycott it

Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday suggested that United States athletes should boycott next year's Olympian competitions in China, calling them "Genocide Olympics" in reference to China's alleged humanitarian crises while noting Major League Baseball's recent move from Georgia over a comparably tame voting law. 

China has received sustained criticism from both the Trump and Biden administrations in large part due to the country's mass imprisonment of its ethnic Uyghur population. Critics have argued that Beijing's policy of alleged brainwashing and forced assimilation of Uyghurs amounts to an effective genocide against that demographic. 

In a tweet on Friday, Pompeo highlighted Major League Baseball's recent cancellation of its Atlanta-based All-Star game over Georgia's recent election reform law. 

"We figured out how to move an All-Star game pretty quickly," he wrote. "maybe we can figure out how to move an Olympics. No American athlete should participate in the Genocide Olympics."

Human rights experts have argued for relocating the 2022 Olympics due to China's human rights abuses. Last year, meanwhile, a majority of voters said that the Olympics should not be held in that country.