US News
No One Outside Of China Allowed To Attend 2022 Winter Games In Beijing
The International Olympic Committee said on Wednesday that the only people allowed to attend the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, China, are those who live in China.
“Tickets will be sold exclusively to spectators residing in China’s mainland, who meet the requirements of the COVID-19 countermeasures,” the IOC said. “Specific requirements on COVID-19 countermeasures for spectators from China’s mainland and the details of ticketing arrangements are under discussion and development, and will be released to the public in due course once they are finalized.”
The measures were put in place after consultations with international experts and the Chinese authorities, the release said.
There have been widespread calls for the U.S. and U.S. companies to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics over communist China’s oppression of religious minorities in the country.
“Our position on the 2022 Olympics has not changed,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said earlier this year of Democrat President Joe Biden’s position on the 2022 Winter Olympics. “We have not discussed, and are not discussing any joint boycott with allies and partners.”
The move comes as international pressure is once again in ramping up from the World Health Organization and other entities to get to the bottom of the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
“A new team of about 20 scientists—including specialists in laboratory safety and biosecurity and geneticists and animal-disease experts versed in how viruses spill over from nature—is being assembled with a mandate to hunt for new evidence in China and elsewhere,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “The possibilities that the new team is charged with examining include whether the Covid-19 virus could have emerged from a lab, according to WHO officials, a hypothesis that has especially angered China.”