The Daily Signal - NBA Player Enes Kanter Freedom Stands Tall for Justice

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

Although he gained initial attention for speaking out against the genocidal Chinese Communist Party, pro basketball player Enes Kanter Freedom has been a human rights advocate for nearly a decade now. Freedom says he believes that due to his status as a famous athlete, having played for five NBA teams, he has a responsibility to speak up for causes he's passionate about. "If you are an athlete, you can inspire millions of people out there, especially kids, especially our young generation," says Freedom, who was born in Switzerland to Turkish parents. "If you are well educated enough, if you know what you are talking about, yes, it is important to stand up for things that you believe in." Freedom, who became an American citizen last year, joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to share his story of getting involved in human rights activism. He also offers advice for those of us who want to make a difference in the world. We also cover these stories: President Joe Biden announces that the U.S. is sending $800 million worth of military assistance to Ukraine in its ongoing resistance to Russia's invasion. A group of Republican lawmakers asks the Biden administration to protect the rights of women and girls in sports. Entrepreneur and investor Elon Musk announces he has $46.5 billion lined up to buy Twitter.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We love what you're doing. We love you, we support you, but we just cannot do it on last. I asked them why they said when we have shoe deals, we have family defeat, we have another contract that we try to get. So we just, we cannot do it. This is the Daily Sleadal podcast for Friday, April 22nd. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Doug Blair. That was basketball player and human rights activist Ines Cantor Freedom.

While he gained initial attention for speaking out against the genocidal Chinese Communist, party, Freedom has actually been a human rights advocate for nearly a decade, speaking about human rights abuses around the globe. He joins the show to share his story of getting involved in human rights activism, as as well as offer advice to those of us who want to make a difference in the world. But before we get to Doug's conversation with Niz Cantor Freedom, let's hit our top news stories of the day. America is upping its military aid to Ukraine.

On Thursday, President Biden announced that the U.S. is sending $800 million in military assistance to the Ukrainians in their ongoing war against Russia. Here's Biden via Reuters. Today, I'm announcing another $800 million to further augment Ukraine's ability to fight in the east in the Dombos region. This package includes heavy artillery weapons, dozens of howitzers, and 144,000 rounds of ammunition to go with those howitzers. It also includes more tactical drones. Additionally, the president announced a new program aimed at expedited. Ukrainian refugees into the U.S., called Unite for Ukraine. We've already welcomed tens of thousands of Ukrainians

to the United States, and today I'm announcing a program Unite for Ukraine, a new program to enable Ukrainians seeking refuge to come directly from Europe to the United States. This new humanitarian parole program will complement the existing legal pathways available to Ukrainians, including immigrant visas and refugees processing. Finally, Biden announced that all Russian-affiliated ships will be banned from U.S. ports.

Today, I'm announcing that the United States will ban Russian-affiliated ships from our ports, as they did in Europe. That means no ship, no ship that sails under the Russian flag, or that as owned or operated by a Russian interest, will be allowed to dock into the United States port or access our shores. None. A group of Republican lawmakers are asking the Biden administration, to protect the rights of women and girls, particularly in the area of sports. In January 2021, President Biden signed an executive order interpreting Title IX to include gender identity.

The executive order specifically mentions access to sports teams, locker rooms, and bathrooms, meaning men who identify as women can participate on girls' sports teams, change in women's locker rooms, and use women's bathrooms. But Oklahoma Republican representative Mark Wayne Mullen is petitioning the Biden administration to reconsider including gender identity in Title IX. Title IX was originally passed in the 1970s to protect women from discrimination on the basis of sex, specifically in the area of education programs. But Mullen says that redefining Title IX to include gender identity will harm women and girls, specifically in the realm of sports. Mullen and 21 other Republican lawmakers sent a letter on Thursday to the Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, asking him to protect women's sports. In the letter, Mullen says that changing the definition of Title IX to include gender identity will erase 50 years of history and progress. He added that since Title IX was introduced, there has been a significant increase in the number of women who participate in sports and go on to pursue them at a collegiate level.

level. It's a shame the president's leftist agenda is willing to compromise this. As a dad of three daughters, the congressman says that this issue is personal. Elon Musk is mulling a bid to buy Twitter and says he has the funds to do it. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk announced that he has $46.5 billion lined up to buy the company outright. Additionally, Musk suggested he might seek to buy stock directly from shareholders, as it appears unlikely that members of the Twitter Board of Directors are going to be willing to part with their shares. The Tesla CEO said that $25 billion of the $46.5 billion will come in the form of debt from banks, like Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Barclays.

The other $21.5 billion will be provided in private equity by Musk himself. A Twitter spokesperson Thursday confirmed that the company was considering the offer, though experts are skeptical, the board will accept the proposal. The spokesperson said, as previously announced and communicated to Mr. Musk directly, the board is committed to conducting a careful, comprehensive, and deliberate review to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interest of the company and all Twitter stockholders. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Inez Canter Freedom as we discuss his story of getting involved in human rights activism. I'm Zach Smith. And I'm John Carlo Canaparo. And if you want to understand what's happening at the Supreme Court, be sure to check out SCOTUS 101, a Heritage Foundation podcast.

We take a look at the cases, the personalities, and the gossip at the highest court in the land. Be sure to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you find your podcasts. It's SCOTUS 101. My guest today is Inez Cantor Freedom, a professional basketball player and human rights activists. Mr. Freedom, welcome to the show. Thank you for having, I appreciate it. Absolutely. You have a fascinating story of your time growing up in Turkey and then moving from Turkey to America as an immigrant. Would you be able to go a little bit into your background for our listeners? Of course. I actually born in Switzerland. I didn't born in Turkey.

You know, because of my dad was doing his master there and then I moved back to Turkey when I was nine months. And then I grew up into Turkey and I started playing basketball there actually. And then unfortunately, you know, you have to pick either education or basketball in Turkey, you know. And then my dad wanted me to do the ball. So that's why I came here. And United States, I was back in, you know, 2009. I was 17 years old. Went to prep school here. Went to college in Kentucky.

Then I got drafted in, you know, 2011 by Utah Chess. Nice. Recently, you've become very famous for vocally criticizing the Chinese Communist Party and a lot of their human rights abuses. there. But you actually have also had human rights abuse activism in Turkey as well. Would you be able to talk about how you got into this type of activism? Of course, you know, I remember, you know, my first two-year in a league, all I care about was, you know, just playing basketball, having fun with my teammates and stuff. And there was a corruption scandal happened in Turkey back in 2013.

And President Erdoin and his family was involved in it. And that was like the first time I actually like a put a very simple tweet out there and because he was going around and put an instant people in jail, police, persecutors, judges and some other innocent people. And because of the NBA platform, it became a conversation. And I was like, even one simple tweet can affect this much from now and I'm going to start, you know, paying attention about what's going in my country. So I've started to study about, you know, the relationship between America and Turkey and the Middle East. and the things are happening in Turkey. And the more I spoke, the more, you know, big platform started to give me, you know, a huge platform.

So, you know, unfortunately, the things that I talk about affected me at my family. You know, my dad was a genetic professor who got fired from his job. My sister went to medical school for six years. She still cannot find a job. And my little brother was playing basketball. he got kicked down every team because of the same last name they were getting affected so much

they had to put a statement out there and said, you know, we are disowning ends. Oh, wow. You know, Turkish government didn't believe that they sent police to my house in Turkey and they took every electronics away, phones, computers, laptops

because they wanted to see if I am sitting in contact with my family of us which I wasn't and they still took my dad in jail for a while but, you know, we put so much pressure from here in America to Turkey, they had to let them go. You know, then, after that, they

revoked my passport, put my name onto Polish and stuff, and, you know, this just passed probably two weeks ago that was the first time that I left the United States and went to Europe because, you know, I couldn't, my name

was only to Polis and I didn't have any better passport. How is your family doing now? I mean, are they okay? Yeah, they're still back in Turkey. The last time I saw my family was back in 2015. Unfortunately, they're not really allowed to come or go anywhere outside to Turkey because the Turkish government took their passport away.

So they're not really allowed to travel anywhere. But other than that, you know, it's just we've been trying to bring him over here for years and years. So, I mean, we're just waiting. That would happen. As I mentioned earlier, you recently became famous for talking about Chinese countries. Communist Party and the Chinese government's human rights abuses. So it sounds like after you talked about Turkey, you continued to talk about these human rights abuses going on around the world in other places. What was that like to have experienced that from the Turkish side and then to continue talking about that?

You know, because the human rights abuses are happening, not just in Turkey, but all over the world. I mean, the biggest one is happening right now to China. It's a very, how I get into is very actually a crazy story. I was in a basketball camp in New York for, you know, for a little kid. And basketball camp was amazing, right? He had so much fun. And after the basketball camp,

I was sitting on a chair and sign on autographs and taking pictures with the kids. And I took a picture with this kid and while I was taking a picture, his parents hold me out in front of everybody. There was media there, there was people, parents, kids, everybody.

And he told me, how can you call yourself a human rights activist when your Muslim brothers and sisters are getting torture and rape every day in concentration camps in China? I was shocked. I didn't know what to say. I turned around

and I told that parents that I promise I'm going to get back to you. And that that day I canceled everything I had. I went back to my hotel. I started to study about what people over there and going through. And I, you know, I studied with Uyghurs and then I, you know, study about what's happened in Tibet.

I already knew about Hong Kong because two years ago when, you know, the NBA GM tweet about Hong Kong, it became a huge conversation in NBA. And then I already knew about Taiwan because I was going to go there. And so I was like, I mean, obviously you can't find. every kind of news on internet, fake news, not fake news, this and that. So I wanted to actually hear about what's going on the first hand. So I called my manager and I told him, was like, I want to have a sit-down conversation with someone who experienced in concentration camp. And he was very shocked, actually. He's like, what are he talking about? He's

like, yep, I want to talk to something. And so we set up this meeting and obviously I don't know who listens who listened to this podcast. I'm sure there are so many kids that are watching so I don't want to get into too much details, but the things that she told me that what she went through over there was just, I just, I was speechless.

And now, you know, she told me about the gang rape, she told me about the tortures, and she told me about how many people actually are dying in those concentration camps and the Chinese government trying to hide it from the whole world. And I was like, I don't care how much money or business involved, if you are carrying a heart, you have to stand up for those

innocent people and you have to expose all those human abuse or happening in China. So then I decided to talk and became a big mess or something. Now, yeah, mentioning that, not everybody took your activism in a positive light. How has your activism impacted your career? I wish I could say in a really good way because obviously I'm a bad I'm an NBA player and you know

it's all I wished and all I was praying was I was like please God send me one more player that can stand right next to me you know unfortunately whenever I had a conversation with any of my teammates or someone from the NBA or you know not just an NBA but

some other organizations You know, they told me one thing. They said, listen, I think what you're doing is so amazing. We love what you're doing. We love you, we support you, but we just cannot do it out loud. I asked them why they said, well, we have shoe deals. We have, you know, family defeat. We have another contract that we try to get.

So we just, we cannot do it. And I asked him one question that if one of your family members was in those concentration camps getting towards your rate, which is still big money over morals. You know, they conventing. And it was right before the Windsor Olympic stills. I did try to reach out many of the Olympics, but unfortunately, not offensive.

Yeah. You've mentioned a couple of times that you think the NBA and certain other organizations have silenced you and sort of pushed you to the side because of your activism. I have a quote here that you gave to the National Herald, which is a Greek newspaper that says the NBA says that the league stands by our side when it comes to freedom of speech

I don't believe it. They stand on our side as long as what we say helps the league's pockets. Otherwise, they'll do whatever they can to finish you. Do you think that American companies like the NBA and some other businesses that continue to do business with governments like the Chinese government

have a problem with kowtowing to these types of authoritarian world leaders and governments? So the same argument 100% correct. You know, it's a shame how these American companies are bowled down to these big data ships, like especially the biggest big leadership to do like the one in China, you know. You know, I remember it was around two years ago when we all were an NBA bubble, right? MBA was all about social justice, all about, you know, Black Lives Matter and, you know,

what can we do to just inspire our young generation? They even put, some phrases behind our jersey, some logos on the court and stuff, right? I was like, okay, you know, cool. But then what frustrates me is that two years later this happens, and not one person from NBA or player association or from my team or any of my colleagues goes out there and say, we support this, not one. So the hypocrisy is what that really frustrates me, you know? Right.

So I feel like, I mean, I feel like besides WTA, Women's Association, every organization, every, you know, associations or company, first of all, should take a look at what WTA did. That's the second to take you look at that. And someone used to hold them an economy. You mentioned that there has been activism in the sports world, like Black Lives Matter. I know Colin Kaepernick kind of comes to mind when I think of activism. in the sports world. Do you think that there is a place for activism in sports organizations? I mean, if you're an athlete, you can inspire millions of people out there, especially kids,

especially our young generation. I say this every time because of the social media. They follow everything that we're doing. So it can affect a lot. It can impact so many people out there. And I think, I mean, if you are well-educated enough, if you know what you're talking about, yes, it is important to stand up for the things that you're doing. you believe it. But if you pick and choose, right, if you only pick the ones that is not going

to affect your pocket, that is the line that I'm going to go out there in exposit. You know, there are many athletes out there that will only criticize the things that won't affect their pocket or business, you know, or their movies or their shoe deals. So that's why I'm like really frustrated apart. So you see that's more of a distinction between maybe politically advantageous activism versus activism that actually has an impact on the

world? Right. Okay. You legally changed your last name to freedom. This was a big story that you had legally done this, that your name wasn't freedom and you decided to add that to your name. What motivated you to do that? I would actually

just talk about it like a ten minutes ago. It's a funny story I tell us to everywhere. I remember first time coming to America back in 2009. I was going to prep school. And one of my teammates actually criticized the president. And I was very afraid for him because I was like, I thought he was going to be thrown in jail the next day.

Because where I'm coming from, if you are criticizing the government, if you are saying anything against the president, you are the enemy of the state. I give this example a lot because it's very, crazy my manager's wife's dad like one of my posts on Twitter and he was thrown in jail for 13 days. Wow. That is, that is, I just couldn't believe it when he told me about it.

But then my teammate who criticized the president actually explained me about what freedom is all about. Speech, religion, expression of press, I really didn't understand it because I did not grow up having any of those. And the more I meet with people, the more I sit down to have a conversation with the true, real Americans, you know, I was like, wow, you know, we are very blessed to be in a country where there are rules on laws and chains and balances. You know, there are tons of countries out there that you are, I mean, if you're a journalist that you write against the government, or if you're a media outlet, or if you're a newspaper, that you write anything against, you know, the regime, then you'll hold your media outlets will be shot. down and the journalists will be in jail. And it'll be very tough. So I just want to, the reason I pick that name because I want to, everyone wants to know that help last the area.

I think that's such a wonderful story. And it really does speak to, I think, of a notion that's missing from America these days, which is pride and a belief that America is good. What do you think about the type of people who will go on air or TV or on the radio and say things like America is a bigoted country or it's a racist country? What are your thoughts about that? People need to understand, obviously, first of all, America having her own problems too, but at the same time, people need to understand, I'm coming from a country, like I said again,

you criticize anything you'll be thrown in jail the next day, or there are countries out there like China or North Korea or, you know, like Turkey or, you know, Iran or many other other countries, Russia, right? There are no human rights, no democracy, no freedom. no freedom of speech, people should feel very lucky and blessed to be in a country like America. And you should feel very blessed because obviously there's democracy, there's freedom, and you love the government, you hate the president, whatever you are, then you can tell all your feelings and you can actually put it out there.

So people should feel definitely to be very lucky. As we begin to wrap up here, I'm curious what your thoughts are. As somebody who has been doing this type of activism for such a long time now, what do you think the most effective way for people who maybe don't have a platform as big as yours, who aren't NBA athletes, how should they engage in activism? How is the most effective way for them to do that? I mean, I feel like people always can impact whoever they live around, their family, their classmates, or their teammates or whatever you're doing.

you can impact one or two or three people. I mean, don't say it's only one or two per person. I mean, it's important, you know. I will just say, you know, don't give up on, you know, don't keep up on inspiring anyone. One person is one person. You can't change his whole life. You know, you might not change the whole world,

but you might change his world, you know. So just be courageous and just go out there and just speak your mind. Absolutely. That was Ines Cantor Freedom, a professional basketball player and human rights activist. Mr. Freedom, I very much appreciate your time. Thank you so much. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to The Daily Signal Podcast.

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