Former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom took to Twitter on Sunday to charge his former employers with hypocrisy for supporting Ukraine in their war against Russia after they criticized him for calling attention to Chinese human rights abuses.
Freedom drew criticism from his former team, the Boston Celtics, and the league after wearing shoes that called attention to China’s enslavement of its Muslim Uyghur minority and oppression of political freedom in Tibet. Yet, his former has now seen fit to have their coaches wear blue and yellow Ukrainian flag pins in solidarity with those fighting against Russia.
And the irony is not lost on Freedom.
“Hypocrites! I see Celtics coaching staff wearing Ukrainian flag pins, which I support,” said Freedom. “What about Syria, Afghanistan, Uyghurs, Hong Kong, Tibet, Taiwan.
“Why is it okay to speak up about human rights violations there but not in other countries? Is there not much profit from Russia?”
How is it fair when I wore shoes to bring awareness about Human Rights violations around the world, @Celtics begged me to remove them and threatened to ban me, #Celtics now wear Ukrainian flag pins.
Who approved this @NBPA / @NBA?
Who chooses whose lives are more important? https://t.co/NT8daMNB4e
— Enes FREEDOM (@EnesFreedom) March 6, 2022
Freedom is opposed to war and human rights abuses in Ukraine as much as he is anywhere else. His tweet is intended to draw attention to the hypocrisy of the NBA’s support for Ukraine while ignoring human rights abuses in the rest of the world, not at the NBA’s support of Ukraine itself.
In the final analysis, Freedom answered his own question. If Nike had a significant number of factories in Russia, there probably wouldn’t be any Ukrainian flag pins.
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