Photo: wikipedia / RNZ Victoria Young
Enes Kanter Freedom is a former NBA player who lost his job for speaking out on human rights abuses in China and Turkey.
Raised in Turkey, Freedom got a college basketball scholarship in the US and played for the Boston Celtics.
He began to to use his platform to express his views on human rights abuses in his homeland under President Tayyip Erdogan, and that led to his Turkish citizenship being revoked in 2017.
He then began calling out human rights abuses in China, and criticising the NBA and companies like Nike for doing business with China.
In 2021 Enes Kanter Freedom became a US citizen – and in the same year, he was traded from the Boston Celtics – then “released from playing” which he says was in retaliation for his criticisms of China.
Freedom was in New Zealand last week as the guest of a Turkish community group and he met with parliamentarians and other civil society leaders.
