Boston Celtics star and human rights activist Enes Kanter Freedom dunked on China in an ad that will air during the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Kanter discusses the perils of censorship in the commercial, which features him wearing a shirt that reads, “Free Tibet, Free Taiwan, Free Hong Kong, Free Uyghurs,” in a visual jab at the Chinese government.
“I remember the first time coming to America,” he recalled in the ad. “One of my teammates criticized the president and I said, ‘Dude, what are you doing? They might put you in jail.’ And he said, ‘This is America.’ And he explained to me what freedom of speech means. … Unfortunately if you use your free speech in Turkey, you’ll end up in jail.”
Kanter said he began speaking out against the Turkish government and they revoked his passport in response. He explained that his father was also put in jail and was forced to disown the NBA player to get out.
“People should feel very lucky and blessed to be in a country like America where there’s human rights,” he remarked. “And obviously, America is having her own problems. But change can only happen in America with freedom of speech. And without freedom, we cannot do anything.”
Kanter followed up the commercial with an animated Twitter video that had “South Park Vibes,” and featured NBA star LeBron James and Chinese President Xi Jinping torturing and murdering him.
The video, which he tweeted on Thursday, features a bruised and bloodied Kanter tied to a chair, while James and Jinping decide what to do with him.
“How do we fix this mess this piece of s–t made,” animated James asks.
“We make a video of him retracting his statements, saying very nice things about us and we send it to the news,” Jinping’s character replies.
When Kanter’s character responds that he’ll never do it, cartoon Jinping shoots him and remarks, “This isn’t up for discussion, in China you comply or you die.”
James character tells Jinping he can’t murder Kanter, but the communist president says that he “kills people all the time,” and had murdered “two million Muslims just last month.”
James comes to the realization that Jinping is a “monster” and admits he didn’t do his “research” about the laborers who make his shoes in China. Jinping shoots Kanter in the head and turns the gun on James. “Are you going to comply, LeBron?” He asks.
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