Enes Kanter Freedom’s World Cup call to action

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Susan Crabtree
Real Clear Wire

Iran’s World Cup defeat at the hands of the U.S. team may have speeded the Islamic Republic’s exit from the global tournament and sparked mixed feelings among fans back at home, but the team earned high marks from one prominent fellow athlete and human rights advocate.

Enes Kanter Freedom, the former Boston Celtics center who has accused the NBA of shunning him for speaking out against human rights abuse in China, heaped praise on the members of the Iranian soccer team for their silent demonstration before their opening match against England last week.

“I was super pumped when I saw that the Iranian football players did not sing the national anthem,” Kanter Freedom told RealClearPolitics. “They were protesting what’s happening in their country with the Iranian regime … protesting for all the innocent women and against misogyny. I was just very excited and thought, wow, finally, they are standing up for what they believe.”

The Iranian athletes’ courageous act against the governing regime in Tehran demonstrated solidarity with widespread protests that have gripped the country since mid-September after the funeral of Mahsa Amini. She was arrested by the country’s “morality police” for allegedly wearing her hijab too loosely and died three days later after what her family describes as severe beatings while in custody.

The public act of defiance didn’t come cheap. CNN reported that the Iranian soccer players were called to a meeting with members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country’s most powerful military force, who threatened their families with imprisonment and torture if the team members participated in further protests. Ahead of their game against Wales a few days later, the athletes dutifully sang the anthem.

But Kanter Freedom, who became a U.S. citizen last year and marked the occasion by legally changing his last name to “Freedom,” said the bravery the Iranian athletes initially displayed showed the world just how deep public dissent runs in Iran. He compared it to the angry protests across China in the last week over that oppressive regime’s strict COVID lockdown policies.

“When you look at the world right now, the ‘unshakeable’ regimes are now being shaken to their very core,” the 30-year-old athlete asserted. “People are sick of these dictatorships, and they want their freedom.”

After Iran’s 0-1 loss to the U.S. on Tuesday, media outlets reported that protesters across Iran celebrated the defeat as a blow to the ruling regime with fireworks, chants of “U-S-A!” and more demands for freedom. Amid Tuesday’s renewed protests, Kanter Freedom sent out a message to his nearly 640,000 Twitter followers in support of the “brave people of #Iran in their fight for Freedom and democracy.”

“My prayers and support [are] with them daily,” he tweeted. “Power to the people!”

At the beginning of the year, he urged athletes to boycott the Winter Olympics in Beijing over China’s human rights record and the documented detention of nearly a million Uyghurs, members of a Muslim religious and ethnic minority, into labor camps. The 6-foot-10 big man says it’s a pivotal time for human rights worldwide and called on all athletes to use their outsized influence to voice support for dissidents bravely standing up to repressive regimes. U.S. and other athletes, he said, also shouldn’t remain silent about widespread reports that thousands of migrant workers died in recent years working in Qatar on World Cup projects and stadiums.

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“I’m not sure what all the solutions are, but if the players are going there, and they’re not saying a word about it, come on. You have an amazing platform – all the microphones and all the cameras in the world are watching you … more than 1 billion people are watching this tournament.”

“If you’re attending, do something … don’t be a part of the propaganda,” he urged.

As the Iranian soccer team discovered, such high-profile protests can come with significant personal costs. Qatari officials are reportedly working with the IRGC and other dictators to prevent dissidents who purchased tickets from attending and restricting the number of media outlets allowed to cover the games.

Kanter Freedom is acutely aware of the risks of speaking out against dictatorships. Earlier this year, the Celtics traded the 11-year NBA veteran to the Houston Rockets, who then waived him with no teams picking him up. Fans speculated that Freedom’s anti-China messaging cost him his basketball career because of the NBA’s lucrative link to the Chinese market.

The Rockets previously found themselves in hot water with China’s communist regime when general manager Daryl Morey supported Hong Kong’s independence in 2019. At the time, Morey tweeted, “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” Fans and critics speculated that shunning Kanter Freedom was a way for the Rockets to regain the good graces of NBA officials.

His parents, who are from Turkey and live there now, also faced arrest and persecution in 2016 after he labeled Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the “Hitler of our century” for cracking down on free speech, purging dissidents, and imprisoning journalists. His parents then publicly disowned him over his political views and adherence to the Gulen movement, which advocates for justice, democratic reforms, and religious tolerance for non-Muslims. The movement was founded by a Muslim scholar and preacher, Fethullah Gulen, whom Erdogan accused of attempting to overthrow his government and helping launch the coup. Gulen has lived in the United States in self-exile since 1999.

Over the last several years, Kanter Freedom has faced down a series of threats. In 2017, before he became a U.S. citizen, Turkey revoked his passport and requested his extradition, sending out a “red notice” through Interpol, requesting law enforcement arrest him. While hosting a basketball camp in Indonesia, Kanter Freedom was forced to leave in the middle of the night when his manager discovered that police were searching for him. The threats to his life prevented him from traveling outside of the U.S. during his NBA career, but now that he has a U.S. citizenship and passport, he says he feels “way safer” and is traveling freely again.

Kanter has plenty of supporters in Washington in both parties who have stood with him to condemn Turkey for its repression and censorship, as RCP chronicled earlier this year. Republicans and Democrats alike have embraced him for speaking out against human rights abuses in China and Turkey and for condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Kanter Freedom counts Sens. Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, as a personal friend whom he came to know during his time as a Portland Trailblazer. He also got to know Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer while playing for the New York Knicks and befriended Labor Secretary Martin Walsh when Walsh was mayor of Boston and Kanter Freedom was with the Celtics.

President Trump was viewed as more permissive of Erdogan than President Biden, who recognized the Armenian genocide early last year despite Turkish warnings not to do so. Still, that stronger stance hasn’t translated into public or private support for Kanter Freedom from the White House or State Department.

While Kanter Freedom was readily embraced by the Trump administration (he spoke directly with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and met with several Trump officials), the former NBA player has had more trouble penetrating the current administration. He has yet to receive a meeting with any top officials, despite attempts to reach out to them every couple of weeks. Those with ties to Biden have privately explained to Kanter Freedom that Erdogan is threatening to become a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, so a White House or meeting with top Biden officials is too much of a risk with the war in Ukraine still grinding on.

“My friends in Washington have told me that I guess [Biden is] worried about meeting with a 30-year-old NBA player,” Kanter Freedom said. “That is unacceptable.”

“Right now, Erdogan is playing with the Biden administration. He’s playing with the West – and I’ve seen how he’s doing it, and it’s just killing me.”

Despite the cold shoulder from Biden, Kanter Freedom is finding plenty of receptive audiences overseas.

In the last few months alone, he has traveled to England, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and England to speak to government officials about the importance of standing up to dictators across the globe, including Putin, Xi, and Erdogan, who is running for reelection next year.

Kanter Freedom lauded Lithuania for its strong stand against China. Over the last year, the government in Vilnius has left an economic forum with Beijing, advised people to throw away their Chinese smartphones, and opened diplomatic ties directly with Taiwan. The moves have infuriated Chinese President Xi Jinping and his apparatchiks, who have denounced the country’s audacity as a “mouse, or even a flea, under the feet of a fighting elephant.”

But Kanter Freedom says the U.S. and other world powers can learn from the small Baltic state, which has few economic ties to Beijing. Lithuania can take a stronger stance because its exports to China are minuscule, roughly 1% in recent years. Vilnius is also standing up to Russia with its president recently calling on the European Union to “adjust its course” and put more economic pressure on Putin with even bolder sanctions.

“It’s the leading human rights country in the world,” he said. “But you don’t have to be a country or a government to help these oppressed people in China. Normal people can help – they’re going to shop. If you pick up an item, and it says, ‘Made in China,’ put it down.”

Next week in Washington, D.C., Kanter Freedom will receive the 2022 Lantos Human Rights Prize from the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights & Justice. The organization was founded to carry on the legacy of the late Rep. Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress and a leading human rights champion. Lantos was a Democrat from California who served from 1981 until his death in 2008. The Lantos Foundation focuses on human rights issues related to religious freedom, the rule of law and internet freedom.

In receiving the award, Kanter Freedom is in rarified company. Past recipients include the Dalai Lama, the real-life “Hotel Rwanda” hero Paul Rusesabagina, and Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong. (Rusesabagina and Wong are both being held as political prisoners.) The vaunted group includes the late Professor Elie Wiesel, a Romanian-born American writer and Holocaust survivor who authored 57 books, including “Night,” a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.

“You can know the character of a man by his enemies, and Enes Kanter Freedom has some of the ‘best’ enemies a human rights champion could amass: Xi Jinping, Erdogan, and many other despots and dictators,” said Katrina Lantos Swett, president of the Lantos Foundation and daughter of Tom Lantos. “In an era where professional athletes live in fear of saying the wrong thing and losing coveted sponsor contracts or their spot on the roster, Mr. Kanter Freedom is the rare athlete who has used his platform and influence to stand up – and stands tall – for the causes he cares about, even when it puts him in the crosshairs of brutal regimes and cowardly sports franchises.”

While Kanter Freedom is one of the youngest awardees, Lantos Swett said he has shown a degree of “courage and conviction that few people possess.”

“We know he will continue to forge a path for human rights activists in the years to come,” she added.