The NBA was rightly denounced for choosing profit over principle when it caved to China and apologized for the “regrettable” pro-Hong Kong comments made by one of its general managers, Daryl Morey. Apparently democracy is only as good as the cash it brings in.
But the NBA’s pathetic reaction shouldn’t come as a surprise. The association has been subservient to China for years, ignoring the regime’s blatant human rights abuses and anti-democratic sentiments — all in the name of lucrative contracts.
Take, for example, the NBA’s long-standing training camp in Ürümqi, the capital of Xinjiang, where nearly one million Muslims have been thrown into concentration camps disguised as vocational education centers.
Former detainees recalled the horrific abuses they suffered at the hands of Chinese officials: one former detainee, Zumret Dawut, told the Washington Examiner that every prisoner she encountered inside the camp had been detained for religious reasons. One woman was imprisoned because her mother and father-in-law made a pilgrimage to Mecca.
Dawut said she was detained because her husband had prayed at a nearby mosque. The guards beat her and as they did they yelled, “Call your God again, let him save you from my hand.”
Another former prisoner, Mihrigul Tursun, said she was beaten and electrocuted for days on end while her imprisoners mocked her, screaming, “Where is your God? You say God, where is your God? Tell him if he is stronger than me to help you,” she recalled. The only god present in that camp was Chinese President Xi Jinping, to whom the prisoners were forced to pay tribute time and time again.
Just a few miles down the road, the NBA turned a blind eye while it hosted nearly 240 student athletes, according to Slate, at one of its training camps. Either the NBA is willfully ignorant of China’s torture camps or it doesn’t care — at least, not as much as it cares about China’s 1.4 billion person potential fan-base.
There are two important takeaways from all of this: First, by forcing Morey to withdraw his comments about Hong Kong, the NBA didn’t just acquiesce to China’s authoritarian tactics; it embraced them. The NBA squeezed a public apology out of Morey, then roped in its players and pushed them to issue similar statements of support for China. And just yesterday two fans were kicked out of a Philadelphia 76ers exhibition game against a team visiting from China, just for holding signs that said “Free Hong Kong.” That’s the kind of censorship and intimidation China uses on those who question its authority, and the NBA is helping import that into the U.S.
More importantly, by residing and working in Ürümqi, the NBA isn’t just ignoring the regime’s egregious human rights abuses — it’s giving them sanction. China will continue to abuse Muslim women like Dawut and Tursun unless it’s given a reason not to, and it seems like international and political pressure won’t be enough. If the NBA grew a backbone and withdrew its economic incentives, however, China might be forced to reconsider.
Silence is complicity, as the saying goes, and in the end, the NBA’s profiteers will have one question to answer: Was the money worth it?
