NBA star Enes Kanter Freedom called out the league and commissioner Adam Silver for purportedly cozying up to the Chinese Communist Party and turning a blind eye to human rights abuses and the treatment of Uyghur Muslims.
“The NBA [is the] ‘No Boundaries Association.’ The NBA gives free propaganda to a genocidal regime,” he said Thursday on “The Ingraham Angle.”
Freedom reacted to reports NBA league owners all allegedly have over $10 billion invested in China and a video from the Washington Wizards showing Chinese Amb. Qin Gang shooting free throws.
“I have been playing 11 years in NBA and over 800 games,” he said. “I have never, ever in my whole career [seen] any ambassador of any government that takes the court before or after the game and takes free shots.”
“I remember when my manager sent me that video, I thought it was a joke, but I just — when I saw that tweet from the Chinese ambassador — I was like, ‘This is just disgusting.’”
The former Boston Celtics forward told guest host Raymond Arroyo he wanted to call out Silver directly for being silent while the CCP “slaughters” Muslims in concentration camps.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver speaks to the media prior to the game of the Dallas Mavericks against the Philadelphia 76ers as part of the 2018 China Games at the Mercedes-Benz Arena on Oct. 5, 2018, in Shanghai, China.
((Getty Images/ Visual China Group via Getty Images))
“When the Muslims are being literally slaughtered in concentration camps in China, you [Adam Silver] are silent, and not only are you silent, but you’re literally working with this genocidal regime,” he said. “You’re literally working with the most brutal regime in the world hand-in-hand and trying to make money and business over there.”
“Please look me in the eye and say you don’t know nothing about the 3 million people in concentration camps in China [who] are getting tortured and raped every day. Shame on you.”
A United Nations report in late August alleged the Chinese government committed “serious human rights abuses” in its detention of Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic group, and other religious minority groups in Xinjiang.
Ethnic Uighur demonstrators take part in a protest against China, in Istanbul, Turkey, October 1, 2021. REUTERS/Dilara Senkaya
(REUTERS/Dilara Senkaya)
Scott Busby, deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the State Department, testified before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2018 that Chinese authorities have detained at least 800,000 Uyghurs and potentially up to 2 million since 2017.
They have reportedly been subjected to torture, forced labor and sterilization.
Freedom added the only thing the NBA cares about is its business, money and PR.
“There are more important things like morals, values and principles, but I just hope that people can see it and Americans can wake up and see, look, this is 100% [an] American-made organization and the Chinese dictatorship can fire — can fire — an American citizen from 100%-American-made organizations. It’s unacceptable.”
