KEEP politics out of sports? Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter begs to disagree.
Over the past few weeks, the Swiss NBA player has been using the hardcourt to speak out about issues of social injustice around the world.
The Celtics recently signed up the 6-foot-10 center to add depth to its big men, and he’s currently playing his first season with them. In the space of his first few games, Kanter also sported custom shoes that broadcast his advocacies.
His latest protest is targeting one of the NBA’s biggest sponsors: sports giant Nike, as well as its founder Phil Knight.
He sported an Air Jordan IV Low with the words “Hypocrite Nike,” “Modern-day Slave,” “Made with slave labor,” “No more excuses” scrawled over its uppers.
In addition, blood-like speckles are splattered all over the white base.
“To the owner of NIKE, Phil Knight, How about I book plane tickets for us and let's fly to China together. We can try to visit these SLAVE labor camps and you can see it with your own eyes,” he wrote in the caption. “[LeBron James], [Michael Jordan], you guys are welcome to come too. #EndUyghurForcedLabor.”
"Nike likes to say, ‘just do it. Well, what are you doing about the slave labor that makes your shoes? That slave labor that makes you rich?”
“To the owner of Nike, Phil Knight, I have a message for you. How about I book a plane ticket for us. Let’s fly to China together. We can try to visit these slave labor camps and you can see with your own eyes. Stop with hypocrisy. Stop with modern-day slavery, now.”
Enes Kanter uses sneakers as protest
Since mid-October, he begun sharing a series of posts calling out certain political figures and raising awareness on certain causes on human rights and freedom.
He posted videos of himself appealing to the Chinese government to free the Tibetan people from slavery.
The veteran center also spoke about what he tagged as ‘cultural genocide’ in Tibet, who has been under Chinese dictatorship for decades. He also called Xi Jinping a ‘brutal dictator’ from that end.
Earlier this year, though, in a statement released online Nike claimed that it “does not source products in Xianjiang Uyghur,” and have “confirmed with our contract suppliers that they are not using textiles or spun yarn from the region.”
Read the full statement here.
It also bared that the brand prohibits any type of prison, forced, bonded or indentured labor, as stated in the Nike Code of Conduct and Code of Leadership Standards.
Hence, it added: “Nike is commited to ethical and responsible manufacturing, and we uphold international labor standards. We are concerned about reports of forced labor in, and connected to, the Xianhiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.”
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