Nike, in an apparent bid to force the Washington Redskins to change their name, has removed all Redskins gear from its website.
Moreover, the vertical drop-down menu on the left side of the screen, which displays the names of all 32 NFL teams, does not show the Washington Redskins.
“Last year, Nike omitted the team name from its annual Salute to Service collection,” according to Pro Football Talk. “The more recent action sends a much stronger message.”
Despite Nike’s apparent new-found problem in doing business with the Redskins. The athletic apparel giant does not appear to have any problem maintaining ties to regimes that use slave labor.
In March of this year, a non-partisan Australian think tank revealed that Nike was one of 83 corporations to maintain “active ties” to factories in China that are believed to use Muslim slave labor.
According to Breitbart’s Frances Martel:
For the past two years, China has built up dozens of concentration camps in Xinjiang, its largest and westernmost province, where between 1 million to 3 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslim ethnic minorities were forced to live, enduring indoctrination, torture, rape, and murder. In December, the Chinese government – which always referred to the concentration camps as ‘vocational training centers’ – announced that the concentration camp victims had ‘graduated’ from ‘vocational training’ and left the camps.
ASPI concludes that the “graduates” were shipped to factories nationwide against their will to endure arduous labor manufacturing products for software companies, car parts, shoes, and other items. When their work shifts concluded, the study found evidence that the workers were then forced to endure the same sort of indoctrination they found at the Xinjiang camps – learning Mandarin (a language not native to Xinijang), memorizing Communist Party songs, and idolatry of dictator Xi Jinping.
ASPI concluded, “The Chinese government has facilitated the mass transfer of Uyghur and other ethnic minority citizens from the far west region of Xinjiang to factories across the country. Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour, Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 83 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen.”
Redskins Owner Dan Snyder is under pressure from multiple business partners and corporate sponsors to change the team name. As of the time of this writing, Snyder is said to have no “official plans” to change the team name.
Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter @themightygwinn