If the NBA wants to prove that it’s not perpetually bootlicking to Chinese communists, it could start by dumping an owner of one of its top franchises.
Or so U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton believes.
The Arkansas Republican on Tuesday said NBA Commissioner and the league should sever its connection to Chamath Palihapitiya, part-owner of the Golden State Warriors.
During a recent podcast interview, Palihapitiya dismissed the concerns of those who want China held accountable for its ongoing Uyghurs, a Muslim minority.
“Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs, okay?” he told podcaster Jason Calacanis.
“You bring it up because you really care, and I think it’s nice that you care. The rest of us don’t care,” Palihapitiya, a minority owner of the Warriors, declared. “I’m telling you a very hard ugly truth. Of all the things that I care about, yes, it is below my line.”
As the BBC reported last year, “Human rights groups believe China has detained more than one million Uyghurs against their will over the past few years in a large network of what the state calls ‘re-education camps,’ and sentenced hundreds of thousands to prison terms.”
“There is also evidence that Uyghurs are being used as forced labour and of women being forcibly sterilised. Some former camp detainees have also alleged they were tortured and sexually abused,” the network added. The U.S., the BBC shared, considered what’s happening to the Uyghurs genocide.
On Tuesday, Cotton noted that the NBA is quick to discipline the league and its fans on behalf of woke causes. It should do so now, he added, to show it is not hypocritical in the face of China’s alleged human rights abuses.
“Woke CEO Chamath Palihapitiya said no one cares about the Chinese Communist Party’s mass enslavement, torture, and rape of religious minorities. He may be so callous that he doesn’t care about genocide, but the American people do,” Cotton said in a statement.
“The NBA has investigated owners and forced a sale after outrageous comments before, and it even moved the All-Star game to protest a North Carolina law saying boys and girls shouldn’t use the same bathroom. The league will prove itself greedy, spineless, and hypocritical if it doesn’t force Palihapitiya to sell his interest in the Warriors.”
Cotton was referring to the fact that in April 2014, the NBA banned then-Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling for life over alleged racist remarks that were made in an undercover audio recording. Not long afterward, Sterling’s family sold the team.
Three years later, the NBA relocated its All-Star Game from Charlotte after North Carolina adopted a law that required trans people to use the bathroom of their birth sex.
According to The Washington Times, even the Warriors distanced the franchise from its partial owner, saying in a statement Palihapitiya’s views “certainly don’t reflect those of our organization.”
Palihapitiya then tweeted a clarification.
“In re-listening to this week’s podcast, I recognize that I come across as lacking empathy. I acknowledge that entirely,” he said.
“As a refugee, my family fled a country with its own set of human rights issues so this is something that is very much a part of my lived experience. To be clear, my belief is that human rights matter, whether in China, the United States, or elsewhere. Full stop.”
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