Once the 2022 Beijing Olympics are underway next month, people all around the globe will tune in and watch the athletic spectacle on television — but they won’t be watching at Dirty Water, a sports bar located in Washington D.C.
The Daily Caller reported that the bar’s owner, Chris DeFelice, has decided not to show the Olympics at his establishment as a way of opposing China’s human rights abuses.
DeFelice is also calling for other companies to do the same.
“I am formally announcing that Dirty Water will not show the 2022 Winter Olympics hosted in China. We cannot in good conscience support an event hosted in a place with such current despicable human rights policies. We ask and challenge other businesses like ours to join us,” DeFelice told the Daily Caller in a statement.
“As a sports fan, the still current major questions about the well being of tennis star Peng Shuai and the activism of Boston Celtics player Enes Kanter Freedom basically woke me up to things I glossed over much like many others,” he told the outlet in an interview. “I am as guilty as most in the western world to sort of ignore and lack concern for these atrocities that not only have taken place for years but are current! I ask again, where is Peng Shuai and why did she skip the ongoing Australian open? There’s only four majors in tennis and she skipped the one that exists on the Asia-Pacific side of the world. We have to ask why.”
The U.S. has announced a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics, but some people, including DeFelice, believe there should be a total boycott.
“This isn’t easy for me because I know how damn hard these athletes work to have their moment in the sun once every four years. I support these American athletes and all athletes in their Olympic dream. The failure not to move the Olympics out of China falls on the IOC. However, four years of hard work isn’t of greater value than the lives of the oppressed in China,” DeFelice told the outlet.