(TargetLiberty.org) – China’s horrific abuse of the Uyghur people has prompted diplomatic boycotts of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. An ESPN guest is now under fire for comparing what’s happening in China to an ongoing partisan fight in the US.
On February 4, “Around the Horn” host Tony Reali started a conversation with his guests about the Winter Olympics and genocide of the Uyghur minority in the communist country. He asked his guest J.A. Adande how he could watch the games and enjoy them when something so horrific is taking place.
Adande, a professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, said sports fans have to have “cognitive dissonance” to enjoy sports, even in America because of controversies surrounding the NFL. Then he boldly declared the United States has no right to judge the communist government’s human rights records because there’s alleged police brutality and “assaults on the voting rights of our people of color in various states.”
.@jadande talks about reconciling watching the Beijing Winter Olympics amid China's human rights crisis pic.twitter.com/mqkOygjBXV
— Around The Horn (@AroundtheHorn) February 4, 2022
The claim was quite shocking. The Chinese government is allegedly sterilizing Uyghur women and they’re reportedly forcing pregnant women to have abortions. The government has created massive labor camps and put the Uyghurs to work as slaves so Chinese companies have free labor.
In the US, there’s a disagreement about election security, not voting rights. We aren’t living in the 1950s when people were lynched for trying to vote. The comparison is not just wrong, it was insulting. And yet, both ESPN and Northwestern University have refused to push back in the week since Adande made the remarks. Imagine a conservative saying the same thing. Do you think the network would have stayed silent?
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