Open Doors is the nation’s leading religious freedom advocacy organization. Its CEO, David Curry is calling for the boycott due to China’s persecution of Christians and other religious minorities.
While Open Doors USA ranked China 17th among the “top 50 countries where it’s most difficult to follow Jesus,” Curry dedicated a significant portion of a recent press conference highlighting the religious persecution perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party.
Curry also addressed the 2022 Winter Olympics scheduled to kick off in Beijing on Feb. 4. He cited the upcoming Olympics as “one example of how China is using sports, money and investment in infrastructure around the world to whitewash their human rights violations.”
While Curry praised the Biden administration’s diplomatic boycott of the Olympics, he stressed that every Christian in the United States had an obligation to go a step further.
He asked every Christian “to join this boycott of the Olympics in the name of our persecuted brothers and sisters in China.” He acknowledged that the persecution of religious minorities extends beyond Christians to include Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group in the country’s far-western region that the Chinese Communist Party subjects to forced labor.
Curry expressed particular concern about China’s use of “centralized government control to suppress and exterminate the free practice of religion of all kinds.”