White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Monday said the Biden administration is fully in support of any American Olympic athletes who choose to protest during the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Ms Psaki’s comments contradicted a warning given last week by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said she “[did] not encourage them to speak out against the Chinese government there” because she feared for the safety of any Team USA member who chose to do so.
“[To] remove all doubt about why I said they shouldn’t speak out, it’s because I fear for their safety,” Ms Pelosi said during a Thursday Congressional-Executive Commission hearing on China.
Asked about Ms Pelosi’s remarks, Ms Psaki said she was aware of them but said the view of the Biden White House “is that ... we support our athletes 100 per cent”.
“All athletes have the right to freely express themselves, and that is the case in Beijing at the Olympics,” she said, adding that athletes would “make those choices as individuals”.
Ms Psaki stressed that it is the Chinese government’s responsibility to “live up to its own obligations to maintain a safe environment for all athletes at these games”.
“The world will be watching but we leave it up to individuals. We certainly support the right to peaceful protest,” she said.
The Beijing winter games are the first to be hosted in the Chinese capital, which also hosted the 2008 summer games and is the first city to host both a winter and summer Olympics.
In the months prior to the games, critics called for the International Olympic Committee to relocate them due to China’s ongoing genocide against the Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority in the country’s Xinjiang province.
The Biden administration did not send any official representatives to the games, making the US one of a number of western nations to mount a diplomatic boycott of the games in protest of Beijing’s repressive polices against the Uyghurs and in Hong Kong, where the Chinese government has cracked down on press freedoms and seized control of elections.
