The NBA sure is reluctant to say anything bad about communist China … are they worried they’ll have to move their training camp someplace else?
I can't overstate this enough: the NBA runs a training camp in northwest China's Xinjiang, the site of one of the world's worst atrocities. https://t.co/jEIB6dOVpB
— Isaac Stone Fish (@isaacstonefish) October 7, 2019
As Isaac Stone Fish wrote in Slate last year:
Doing business in an authoritarian country like China inevitably presents ethical and political dilemmas, as several tech giants and airlines have recently learned. But doing business right in the midst of a campaign that some human rights groups have described as genocide is another thing entirely—and most U.S. companies have unsurprisingly given Xinjiang a wide berth. Yet one of the exceptions is striking: the National Basketball Association. In Oct. 2016, the NBA set up one of its three Chinese training centers in, of all places, Ürümqi, the capital of Xinjiang and site of massive race riots in 2009 that left hundreds dead. The center, which houses roughly 240 student-athletes ages 14 to 18, according to its website, has kept a very low profile. That’s unsurprising—because the NBA presence in Xinjiang is shameful.
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Operating in such a place seems antithetical to the public stance of a league that has recently gone out of its way to tout its progressive, social-justice bona fides. After the Trump travel ban targeting seven Muslim-majority nations, prominent NBA figures took the side of the critics. League commissioner Adam Silver took the unusual step of criticizing the ban, saying “it goes against the fundamental values and the fundamental ingredients of what makes for a great NBA.” Detroit Pistons head coach Stan Van Gundy compared the ban to Hitler registering the Jews.
NBA stars like LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony have condemned police violence and racism in the United States, while players and executives have protested the Trump administration’s separation of immigrant children from their parents. According to his LinkedIn page, the NBA executive George Land oversees the Xinjiang training center. On Twitter, Land’s most recent activity is a retweet of the MSNBC host Chris Hayes condemning the U.S. separation of thousands of mothers from their children. But what about Xinjiang? Thousands of Uighur children are reportedly languishing in orphanages, awaiting their parents’ release from the concentration camps. The NBA didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. Nor did Land. Nor did China’s foreign ministry. (In a response to the recent United Nations report, a senior Chinese official denied the reports of torture and persecution of Uighurs and said that the camps were for “criminals involved only in minor offenses,” to teach them vocational skills.)
Holy hell.
Are you kidding me?! https://t.co/yDaalgSBBs
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) October 8, 2019
Oh my God…
— Terres 幽靈 (@terresgogo) October 8, 2019
What????
Shame on NBA— Little Wong (@Crazylazycat2) October 8, 2019
But they boycott states over toilets.
— Abe Froman™ (@WerIstDeinPa) October 8, 2019
Adam Silver, explain yourself! @NBA
— Chanel Lee (@J0nnguyen) October 8, 2019
The NBA is complicit in these camps.
— Chanel Lee (@J0nnguyen) October 8, 2019
Thank you for this piece. I had had no idea until yesterday when I read it.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) October 8, 2019
One thing’s for sure:
Daryl Morey has really let the cat out of the bag
— hardmaru (@hardmaru) October 8, 2019
The NBA’s gonna have a heck of a time digging their way out of this one.
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