reporter2
22-10-21, 12:04
NBA’s Enes Kanter Calls for a Free Tibet, Sparks Chinese Backlash
The sports league is in hot water in China again after the Boston Celtics center called China’s leader a brutal dictator
By Eva Xiao
Oct. 21, 2021
https://i.imgur.com/3yvy2p5.png
HONG KONG—The National Basketball Association is facing a new eruption of anger in China over a tweet.
Two years after the NBA saw one of its teams wiped off China’s official broadcast channels after its general manager voiced support for Hong Kong protesters, the U.S. basketball league is now facing nationalist umbrage in China over a player’s comments on Tibet. It is likely to serve as a preview of the sporting world’s impending collision with China over human rights in the run-up to Beijing’s Winter Olympics in February.
On Wednesday, Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter posted a video on Twitter advocating independence for China’s ethnic Tibetans—an act that would be considered illegal in the country—while criticizing Beijing’s policies in Tibetan regions, such as restrictions on religion and freedom of speech.
Wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with an image of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader that Beijing views as a separatist, the Turkish basketball player called on Chinese leader Xi Jinping —whom he called a “brutal dictator”—to “free Tibet.”
On Thursday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said at a briefing that Mr. Kanter’s “falsehoods are not worth refuting” and that China would “never accept those attacks and smears against Tibet’s development and progress.”
The NBA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The video has already sparked an angry response from Chinese users on social media, with some vowing to stop watching the NBA. One Celtics fan account with more than 600,000 followers pledged to no longer post about the team at all after Mr. Kanter’s statement. “Resolutely resist any behavior that undermines ethnic harmony and the dignity of the motherland!” the account declared.
Mostly, though, it was silence, with searches for Enes Kanter on China’s Twitter-like Weibo blocked by Thursday afternoon.
The backlash against Mr. Kanter’s Tibet statement comes as the NBA tentatively emerges from its previous geopolitical mishap in China, historically the NBA’s most important international market. The league lost hundreds of millions of dollars after Chinese sponsors cut business ties in response to a quickly deleted tweet supporting Hong Kong protesters by the Houston Rockets’ then-general manager Daryl Morey in 2019.
https://i.imgur.com/D9WEJMj.png
Two years later, state broadcaster CCTV still hasn’t resumed regular streaming of NBA games. Chinese tech giant and NBA streaming partner Tencent Holdings Ltd. has restarted broadcasts of the league’s games, though that relationship could soon be strained again after Mr. Kanter’s video.
On Wednesday, Tencent abruptly cut its stream of the Celtics’ opening-night overtime loss to the New York Knicks, though the 6-foot-10-inch Mr. Kanter, who was wearing custom-painted shoes by a Chinese dissident artist featuring the colors of the Tibetan flag and the words “Free Tibet,” didn’t see any minutes.
On Thursday, the website of Tencent Sports showed that only text updates for future Boston Celtics games would be available, instead of a live stream like other teams except for the 76ers. The Philadelphia team’s president is Mr. Morey, who left the Houston Rockets last year. Replays of past Celtics games were also unavailable.
Tencent didn’t immediately reply for a request to comment.
Mr. Kanter is already well known in the NBA for his political activism, in particular his outspoken denunciations of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan —whom he has called the “Hitler of our century”—and his criticism of the Turkish government’s crackdown following a failed coup attempt in 2016.
In 2019, as the NBA and the Rockets attempted to distance themselves from Mr. Morey’s tweet, thus inviting a second backlash back home in the U.S., Mr. Kanter had criticized the league’s biggest star, LeBron James, for chiding the Houston Rockets manager over his tweet.
Challenging China’s control of Tibetan regions is considered taboo in the country, where ethnic Tibetans have long been subject to fragmented religious and cultural restrictions after the Chinese Communist Party seized control of the Tibet Autonomous Region in 1951. In 2008, resentment toward the Chinese government erupted into bloody riots in the region’s capital, Lhasa, just months before the summer Olympics in Beijing.
This year, a coalition of activists, including groups such as Students for a Free Tibet, have been rallying the international community to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing in response to human-rights concerns.
On Monday, three activists were detained in Greece after disrupting the Olympic torch-lighting ceremony, where they held up a Tibetan flag and another that said “No Genocide Games,” a reference to China’s mass internment of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.
The Hellenic Olympic Committee, Greece’s national Olympic body, said it was disappointed that the ceremony had been used by individuals for “other purposes.”
The press office for Greece’s Ministry of Citizen Protection, which is responsible for public security, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The sports league is in hot water in China again after the Boston Celtics center called China’s leader a brutal dictator
By Eva Xiao
Oct. 21, 2021
https://i.imgur.com/3yvy2p5.png
HONG KONG—The National Basketball Association is facing a new eruption of anger in China over a tweet.
Two years after the NBA saw one of its teams wiped off China’s official broadcast channels after its general manager voiced support for Hong Kong protesters, the U.S. basketball league is now facing nationalist umbrage in China over a player’s comments on Tibet. It is likely to serve as a preview of the sporting world’s impending collision with China over human rights in the run-up to Beijing’s Winter Olympics in February.
On Wednesday, Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter posted a video on Twitter advocating independence for China’s ethnic Tibetans—an act that would be considered illegal in the country—while criticizing Beijing’s policies in Tibetan regions, such as restrictions on religion and freedom of speech.
Wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with an image of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader that Beijing views as a separatist, the Turkish basketball player called on Chinese leader Xi Jinping —whom he called a “brutal dictator”—to “free Tibet.”
On Thursday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said at a briefing that Mr. Kanter’s “falsehoods are not worth refuting” and that China would “never accept those attacks and smears against Tibet’s development and progress.”
The NBA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The video has already sparked an angry response from Chinese users on social media, with some vowing to stop watching the NBA. One Celtics fan account with more than 600,000 followers pledged to no longer post about the team at all after Mr. Kanter’s statement. “Resolutely resist any behavior that undermines ethnic harmony and the dignity of the motherland!” the account declared.
Mostly, though, it was silence, with searches for Enes Kanter on China’s Twitter-like Weibo blocked by Thursday afternoon.
The backlash against Mr. Kanter’s Tibet statement comes as the NBA tentatively emerges from its previous geopolitical mishap in China, historically the NBA’s most important international market. The league lost hundreds of millions of dollars after Chinese sponsors cut business ties in response to a quickly deleted tweet supporting Hong Kong protesters by the Houston Rockets’ then-general manager Daryl Morey in 2019.
https://i.imgur.com/D9WEJMj.png
Two years later, state broadcaster CCTV still hasn’t resumed regular streaming of NBA games. Chinese tech giant and NBA streaming partner Tencent Holdings Ltd. has restarted broadcasts of the league’s games, though that relationship could soon be strained again after Mr. Kanter’s video.
On Wednesday, Tencent abruptly cut its stream of the Celtics’ opening-night overtime loss to the New York Knicks, though the 6-foot-10-inch Mr. Kanter, who was wearing custom-painted shoes by a Chinese dissident artist featuring the colors of the Tibetan flag and the words “Free Tibet,” didn’t see any minutes.
On Thursday, the website of Tencent Sports showed that only text updates for future Boston Celtics games would be available, instead of a live stream like other teams except for the 76ers. The Philadelphia team’s president is Mr. Morey, who left the Houston Rockets last year. Replays of past Celtics games were also unavailable.
Tencent didn’t immediately reply for a request to comment.
Mr. Kanter is already well known in the NBA for his political activism, in particular his outspoken denunciations of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan —whom he has called the “Hitler of our century”—and his criticism of the Turkish government’s crackdown following a failed coup attempt in 2016.
In 2019, as the NBA and the Rockets attempted to distance themselves from Mr. Morey’s tweet, thus inviting a second backlash back home in the U.S., Mr. Kanter had criticized the league’s biggest star, LeBron James, for chiding the Houston Rockets manager over his tweet.
Challenging China’s control of Tibetan regions is considered taboo in the country, where ethnic Tibetans have long been subject to fragmented religious and cultural restrictions after the Chinese Communist Party seized control of the Tibet Autonomous Region in 1951. In 2008, resentment toward the Chinese government erupted into bloody riots in the region’s capital, Lhasa, just months before the summer Olympics in Beijing.
This year, a coalition of activists, including groups such as Students for a Free Tibet, have been rallying the international community to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing in response to human-rights concerns.
On Monday, three activists were detained in Greece after disrupting the Olympic torch-lighting ceremony, where they held up a Tibetan flag and another that said “No Genocide Games,” a reference to China’s mass internment of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.
The Hellenic Olympic Committee, Greece’s national Olympic body, said it was disappointed that the ceremony had been used by individuals for “other purposes.”
The press office for Greece’s Ministry of Citizen Protection, which is responsible for public security, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.