Self-proclaimed advocate for the little guy and NBA star LeBron James continues to remain silent as his multimillion-dollar business partners in China crackdown on memorials for their authoritarian murders of democracy activists on the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
For instance, ahead of the anniversary, which occurs from April 15 to June 5, China deployed 3,000 uniformed and undercover police officers to block likely memorials and gatherings to memorialize the murders of Chinese dissidents during the 1989 pogrom.
The massive police deployment brought human rights leaders in Hong Kong to decry the crack-down on the free speech of democracy advocates in Hong Kong.
Human rights champion Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, wrote an open letter to the people of Hong Kong urging them to stand strong in the face of the continuing brutal repression perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party.
By Friday, news leaked out that the authoritarian-controlled Hong Kong police arrested Chow Hang Tung, a vice-chair of the Hong Kong Alliance and organizer of Hong Kong’s annual candlelight vigil, to remember the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Chow said she was already prepared to be arrested for advocating for democracy in Hong Kong.
“I’m already being persecuted for participating and inciting last year’s candlelight vigil,” she said according to the Associated Press. “If I continue my activism in pushing for democracy in Hong Kong and China, surely they will come after me at some point, so it’s sort of expected.”
Throughout the communist Chinese tyrants’ crack-down on free speech and the oppression of the hopes for a democratic society displayed by regular, everyday Hong Kong citizens, one of China’s leading business partners, LeBron James, has remained utterly silent. Nowhere has James spoken out about the freedom of speech being quashed in Hong Kong. Not once has he decried the secret murders, late-night raids, beatings, and imprisonment of Hong Kong’s democratic protesters.
Indeed, James isn’t even interested in representing his own country at the upcoming Olympics in Tokyo. He’d rather spend his summer pushing his new cartoon movie.
Sadly, LeBron, “man of the people,” James has already spoken in favor of Chinese oppression. Back in 2019, when Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey posted a tweet supporting the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, James attacked the open support of democracy.
In 2019, Morey had posted a simple tweet saying, “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” The Chinese were furious and threatened to boot the entire NBA out of China over Morey’s support for the democracy movement. LeBron himself later spoke out against Morey, calling him “uneducated” for wanting to support people yearning to be free of Chinese oppression.
But it appears to be all about the Benjamins for James. During the dust-up between the communists and the NBA, LeBron reportedly temporarily lost a $1 million endorsement deal in red China.
Still, LeBron is doing fine with his Chinese deals. Reportedly, he will make upwards of $1 billion or more from his Nike contract and tens of millions of that money, directly or indirectly connected to China.
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