In a truly remarkable statement, the National Basketball Association said today that the questions from employees who were silenced for criticizing China were “hypothetical”, less than a year after they were silenced.
The NBA seems to have forgotten the October incident in which Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tried to offer his support for the ongoing Hong Kong protests. The NBA quickly sprang into action, condemning Morey in blatant capitulation for his lucrative share of the Chinese market. He even went on to issue an internal memo requesting his players and employees to remain silent on any political speech about Hong Kong.
The statement came in response to questions from Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo, who has been lobbying the organization for its ties to China.
. @ NBA finally answers me. He will not criticize #China and will not commit to protecting employees who criticize #China. He says that everything is “hypothetical”. Do you remember Daryl Morey? pic.twitter.com/BaUNEtaTaw
– Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) July 29, 2020
In the same statement, the NBA openly refused to condemn any of the actions of the genocidal Communist dictatorship, which was remarkably poorly timed given the news that came in Wednesday afternoon.
In a new investigative report released by ESPN, it was discovered that the NBA ignored complaints about widespread abuse within its “youth development program” that it has carried out in China for four years. The CCP-supported program included three sites. One of them was in Xinjiang, the home of the Uighur minority who are currently suffering from a cultural genocide at the hands of the Chinese government.
A former NBA worker said the atmosphere at the site in Xinjiang was similar to “World War II Germany” and “an athlete training camp.” Another coach said directly, “We were basically working for the Chinese government.”
The charges so far include that Chinese NBA partners physically abused children in the Xinjiang program and failed to provide the promised education.
Additionally, the NBA was actively deterring players from speaking to reporters about abuse on the show, while asking employees to lie about why they wouldn’t comment. Numerous coaches resigned from their duties after witnessing the program.
The Xinjiang stories, combined with the NBA’s failures both to condemn the genocide and to recognize internal censorship, will do little to silence calls for reform within the association’s business with communist China, however lucrative they may be. .
Jonah Gottschalk is an intern at the Federalist. Study Modern History and International Relations at the University of St Andrews.
