Freedom, who has long been an outspoken critic of the Turkish government, had researched the issue after the concerned father of a fan challenged his silence on China\u2019s treatment of Muslim minorities.<\/p>\n
In Xinjiang, China\u2019s westernmost region, President Xi Jinping\u2019s \u201cwar on terrorism\u201d has involved oppression and detentions as a means of forcing ethnic minorities to assimilate into the dominant Chinese culture. Uyghurs<\/a> and other minorities have been imprisoned in reeducation camps and pressured into forced labor at factories across the country.<\/p>\n Freedom was already used to making statements in unconventional ways; he\u2019d changed his surname from Kanter on becoming an American citizen. And as he dug deeper, he found it hard to believe that people weren\u2019t more aware of what was happening in Xinjiang. So he decided to do something about it.<\/p>\n \u201cI reached out to these artists around the world, and I told them to put all their struggles on the shoe,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I\u2019m gonna go out there and play basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n That was the 11th year of Freedom\u2019s NBA<\/a> career. It would be his last.<\/p>\n Teammates began to warn him, he later testified in front of Congress, that he\u2019d never play in the league again. Shortly afterwards, he was released from his contract \u2013 a move the NBA says had nothing to do with his activism.<\/p>\n The cancelled Celtics broadcasts weren\u2019t the first time Beijing had punished the NBA: in 2019, Chinese state media pulled games from its schedule after NBA commissioner Adam Silver defended the actions of Daryl Morey, then a Houston Rockets executive, who had tweeted support for protesters in Hong Kong. The affair cost the NBA hundreds of millions of dollars.<\/p>\n China is a multibillion-dollar market for the NBA, with more basketball fans than the US has people. Freedom says the league is beholden to Chinese interests.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also a huge platform for Chinese brands to advertise themselves to the world. The Chinese sportswear brand Li-Ning has been using NBA players to promote its footwear for over a decade, ever since Dwyane Wade<\/a> ended his contract with Nike\u2019s Jordan subsidiary and signed with the Chinese company in 2012.<\/p>\n Li-Ning and other Chinese brands like Anta and 361 Degrees now compete with legacy American companies for lucrative sponsorship deals. Over a dozen NBA players had deals with the three brands in 2022, according to analysis from ESPN.<\/p>\n Li-Ning has deals with the Golden State Warriors\u2019 Jimmy Butler \u2013 also lured from Jordan in 2020 for a huge deal that includes various signature shoe lines \u2013 and the Houston Rockets\u2019 Fred VanVleet, also president of the National Basketball Players Association. Anta sponsors stars including Klay Thompson and Kyrie Irving, while 361 Degrees\u2019 roster includes the Serbian legend Nikola Joki\u0107<\/a>. (These sponsorship deals are made with the players directly and are not subject to NBA approval.)<\/p>\n None of these players\u2019 representatives responded to requests for comment.<\/p>\n Now, TBIJ and the Guardian can reveal that all three brands are linked to the oppression Freedom highlighted on his trainers. And so is Nike<\/a>.<\/p>\n Leveraging forced labor<\/p>\n Earlier this year a major investigation<\/a> by TBIJ, the New York Times and Der Spiegel connected more than 100 global brands to the Xinjiang labor transfer scheme that moves ethnic minorities thousands of miles across China to work in eastern factories. The transfer scheme is a central pillar of the Chinese government\u2019s systematic destruction of the Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz communities of Xinjiang.<\/p>\n Anta, Li-Ning and 361 Degrees are among the brands that directly own production sites linked to these human rights abuses. And those labels are also supplied by other companies participating in the labor transfer program.<\/p>\n A 361 Degrees factory in Fujian has taken Xinjiang workers for at least a decade: a \u201ccollective wedding\u201d of Kazakh workers at the factory in 2015 referred to nearly 400 workers. Social media content from Xinjiang workers showing the factory compound was uploaded as recently as last year.<\/p>\n At least three factories supplying Li-Ning have used workers from the labor transfer scheme. One clip uploaded by a Uyghur worker shows a pair of black and silver Li-Ning trainers on a conveyor belt at a factory in Hubei.<\/p>\n \u201cLife is too hard, but I don\u2019t want to admit defeat,\u201d reads the title of a video from a worker at a different Li-Ning supplier. \u201cThis guy is really ordering people to work a lot,\u201d says the accompanying voiceover in Uyghur, referring to a Han Chinese supervisor who stands nearby, hands on hips. \u201cIf I don\u2019t get out of here I know I\u2019m gonna work myself to death.\u201d<\/p>\n Enes Kanter Freedom\u2019s sneakers are seen before a 2021 game in Boston. Photograph: Omar Rawlings\/Getty Images<\/p>\n 361 Degrees\u2019 sponsorships stretch beyond the NBA to World Aquatics events and Olympic runners. Li-Ning\u2019s partnerships, meanwhile, include China\u2019s Olympic delegation and a clutch of young badminton pros in the UK. The brand has also made a point of supporting Beijing\u2019s approach to Xinjiang.<\/p>\n When global businesses began to remove Xinjiang cotton from their supply chains after concerns about forced labor in the fields, Li-Ning kept \u201cmade with Xinjiang cotton\u201d on its clothing labels. While Nike and other global brands faced furious backlash from Chinese consumers for ceasing to use Xinjiang cotton \u2013 amplified by state media campaigns \u2013 Li-Ning\u2019s sales and share price surged.<\/p>\n Sporting partnerships of this sort allow these companies to bolster China\u2019s soft power. When the Houston Rockets executive Morey made his statement in support of Hong Kong, Li-Ning and Anta both announced they would be halting their partnerships with the team.<\/p>\n Li-Ning told us it \u201cstrictly opposes and prohibits any form of forced labor\u201d in its supply chain and regularly audits its suppliers, with a \u201czero-tolerance\u201d policy enforced. It added that the company \u201calways upholds human rights and the legal rights of labor\u201d.<\/p>\n 361 Degrees and Anta did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n Mike Bass, an NBA spokesperson, said: \u201cWe have always supported and will continue to support every member of the NBA family, including Enes Freedom, expressing their personal views on social and political issues. We will continue to follow US government guidance and policy regarding operating in China and more than 200 other countries and territories around the world where we engage fans.\u201d<\/p>\n Freedom isn\u2019t surprised to hear that half a dozen factories in the supply chains of Li-Ning, Anta and 361 Degrees are tied to Xinjiang forced labor. But there\u2019s one brand above all that he has questions for \u2013 and he has been asking them for the last four years.<\/p>\n \u2018Selective activism\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cWho makes your shoes in China? Do you even know?\u201d Freedom demanded of Nike in a video posted to Twitter (now X) in 2021.<\/p>\n Nike has been a major commercial partner of the NBA since 1992 and last year signed on to be the league\u2019s outfitting, merchandising, marketing and content partner until 2037 \u2013 a deal reportedly<\/a> worth well over $1bn.<\/p>\n Freedom\u2019s questions came after Nike had been connected to a sneaker factory in Shandong province that had taken Uyghur transfer workers. Nike maintained that the supplier had stopped hiring workers from Xinjiang and that inspections had confirmed this.<\/p>\n \u201cOur ongoing diligence has not found evidence of employment of Uyghurs, or other ethnic minorities from [Xinjiang], elsewhere in our supply chain in China,\u201d it said at the time.<\/p>\n But TBIJ has found sources that link Nike to Fulgent Sun, a footwear manufacturer in Fujian province that has long absorbed workers from Xinjiang. The factory started working with the government to bring Uyghur and Kyrgyz people to Fujian in 2013.<\/p>\n When approached with TBIJ\u2019s findings, a Nike spokesperson said that the company had ended its relationship with the Fujian factory in 2015. They did acknowledge that Nike had sourced from an affiliated site in central China for its label Converse in recent years.<\/p>\n However, various sources \u2013 from industry press and academic articles to Fulgent Sun\u2019s own corporate materials \u2013 point to Nike being an important customer over the past decade.<\/p>\n TBIJ pulled export records that showed multiple shipments from the Fujian factory to Nike in the US after 2015, including as recently as November 2022. The shipments were all delivered via one of the brand\u2019s main logistics partners in the region.<\/p>\n After seeing some of TBIJ\u2019s evidence, Nike said its records \u201ccontradicted [TBIJ\u2019s] claims\u201d, and maintained it hadn\u2019t purchased anything from the implicated factory since 2015. It added that it \u201cremains committed to ethical and responsible manufacturing\u201d.<\/p>\n Fulgent Sun didn\u2019t respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n Freedom \u2013 who wore a pair of shoes emblazoned with \u201cNike Hypocrite\u201d, \u201cMade with slave labor\u201d and \u201cNo more excuses\u201d in one of his final NBA games \u2013 claims it was criticism of both China and Nike that cost him his career.<\/p>\n He\u2019s saddened by what he calls selective activism from Nike, which has been a proud supporter of US-focused social justice movements like Black Lives Matter. \u201cYou stand up for things unless it hits your pocket, hurts you financially,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cStand up for what\u2019s right,\u201d he adds. Speaking to the NBA players sponsored by brands linked to human rights violations, he said: \u201cPut yourself in their shoes. Imagine it was your sister or daughter. 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