A basketball court is shown at the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex in Kissimmee, Fla., Tuesday, July 21, 2020. (AP Photo/Tim Reynolds)
OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 12:35 PM PT — Sunday, July 26, 2020
The NBA has officially cut ties with the Xinjiang region in China over its treatment of ethnic minorities. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) published a letter online that detailed the association’s ties to the Xinjiang Basketball Academy.
The league’s Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum responded to Blackburn by saying “The NBA has had no involvement with the Xinjiang Basketball Academy for more than a year and the relationship has been terminated.”
China has been facing heat from the U.S. and other nations over a number of issues, including human rights abuses in the Xinjiang province.
According to reports, more than 1 million Uighur Muslims and other ethnic minorities have been herded into internment camps. Experts claimed they undergo political indoctrination and forced sterilization.
“There is no such concentration camp in Xinjiang”
China’s ambassador to the UK Liu Xiaoming challenged over drone footage that appears to show Uighur Muslims being blindfolded and led to trainshttps://t.co/4ckTDqIpNe pic.twitter.com/SbLRCwuo55
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) July 19, 2020
Tatum later added that “hundreds of millions of dollars” were lost in revenue when China stopped airing games. Last fall, Chinese broadcasters terminated the televising of NBA games after the Houston Rockets general manager Darryl Morey posted a tweet in support of Hong Kong protesters.
FILE – In this Monday, Dec. 3, 2018, file photo, a guard tower and barbed wire fence surround a detention facility in the Kunshan Industrial Park in Artux in western China’s Xinjiang region. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)
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