"When Enes Kanter Freedom appeared on a basketball court in his Boston Celtics jersey and a pair of trainers emblazoned with the slogan Free Uyghur, the reaction from Beijing was swift. Literally at the half-time, they cancelled every Celtics game on television [in China] for the rest of the year, the basketball player tells the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) and the Guardian. That game, in October 2021, marked a turning point in his career. That's when the NBA got really angry at me, says Freedom."
"Freedom, who has long been an outspoken critic of the Turkish government, had researched the issue after the concerned father of a fan challenged his silence on China's treatment of Muslim minorities. In Xinjiang, China's westernmost region, President Xi Jinping's war on terrorism has involved oppression and detentions as a means of forcing ethnic minorities to assimilate into the dominant Chinese culture. Uyghurs and other minorities have been imprisoned in reeducation camps and pressured into forced labor at factories across the country."
Enes Kanter Freedom protested China's treatment of Uyghurs by wearing trainers reading Free Uyghur during a Celtics game, prompting Chinese broadcasters to cancel all Celtics telecasts in China for the rest of 2021. Freedom researched Xinjiang after a fan's father challenged his silence and found mass detentions, reeducation camps, forced labor, and efforts to assimilate ethnic minorities under Xi Jinping's counterterrorism policies. He enlisted artists worldwide to place their struggles on his shoes and continued to play, but teammates warned his activism could end his NBA career, and he was soon released from his contract.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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