The International Olympics Committee (IOC) is tasked with picking the host countries for the games. We wonder how their decisions are made?

Apparently, concern for human rights is not on their agenda. The upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing are a case in point.

For years, the Chinese government has been violating the rights of people within its border and without. It has suppressed dissent and freedom of speech, imprisoned political opposition, and has acted with aggression toward countries like Nepal and Taiwan. It’s response when other countries call it out has been to express outrage at being insulted. It is big enough and economically powerful enough to get by with it.

But in the past months it seems to have committed an offense too big to ignore. When Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai posted a lengthy letter on Chinese social media accusing a former senior Chinese official of sexually abusing her. Within minutes her post disappeared, any mention of her was scrubbed from Chinese social media, and she physically dropped out of sight. No one in China knows about this, since the national news media are not reporting it. She has made a couple of obviously staged public appearances, but no one believes she is free to come and go. The Women’s Tennis Association has canceled all its events in China in protest.

The Biden administration announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Athletes will compete, but U.S. government officials will not be “contributing any fanfare” to the games, in protest of China’s human rights abuses.

It’s too bad the IOC doesn’t boycott countries that exhibit such bad behavior, but there is a long history of giving the games at times to unworthy hosts, from Hitler’s Germany in 1936, to Putin’s Russia in the 2014 Winter Olympics.

It is sad when the Olympics are distracted by political issues and disputes between nations. Perhaps if the IOC exercised a little discretion in who gets the games, that could be avoided.