but not enough,” praised the Women’s Tennis Association for suspending tournaments in China over safety concerns for Olympian Peng Shuai, protested against the Chinese concentration camps of the Uyghur Muslim minority and denounced the dictatorship in Turkey, which revoked his Turkish passport in 2017 and then imprisoned his father.
SA TODAY talked to Freedom recently about becoming a U.S. citizen on Nov. 29 and changing his last name from Kanter; wearing basketball shoes with messages criticizing Nike and LeBron James over China; and his future with the NBA now that he’s eligible to be traded on Wednesday. His conversation with Editorial Board member Thuan Le Elston has been edited for length and clarity:
en while training and playing basketball. I started following you. I knew you were outspoken about Turkey because of your family situation and the authoritarian regime there. But it seems now your social media feed is almost all China.
alled me out in front of everybody and said how can you call yourself a human rights activist when your Muslim brothers and sisters are in concentration camps getting tortured and raped. I was shocked. I started doing research, and I saw what Uyghurs are going through. And I was ashamed. I was blindly focusing on only (Turkey). I was like, from now on I’m going to do whatever I can to bring awareness to all the Uyghurs out there. The more I studied, I learned about Tibetans, I learned about Hong Kongers, I learned about Taiwanese people, heard about Mongolians, heard about all the abuses done by the Chinese government.
