A former writer for ESPN and the Director of Sports Journalism at Northwestern University compared China’s human rights abuses towards Uyghurs to voting rights in the U.S. In a segment on ESPN, the pundit J.A. Adande said “who are we to criticize China’s human rights record when we have ongoing attacks by the agents of the state against unarmed citizens and we’ve got assaults on the voting right of our people of color in various states in this country.”
Adande, speaking on Around The Horn on ESPN said Republican “assaults on voting rights” and racial injustices make it hypocritical to be occupied with “China’s egregious human rights violations in the context of the Beijing Olympic Games” writes National Review.
Host of the show Tony Reali pointed out to the pundit the severity of the human rights abuse allegations against the Chinese Communist regime. “We’re talking about genocide” said Reali about the injustices China has committed.
“It’s very hard to find a country that isn’t problematic when it comes to human rights, including here. Remember, we had athletes boycott going to Mexico City because of the human rights issues in the United States in 1968” said Adande.
“I think we can bring attention to it. I think it’s notable that we had a Uyghur lighting the torch” he said. Questions still remain as to why the International Olympic Committee (IOC) would purposely choose Beijing to hold the Olympic games.
The offenses of which Beijing has been accused include squashing the Hong Kong democracy movement, especially with its latest national-security law that criminalizes certain speech and erodes press freedoms, oppressing Tibetans, and perpetrating a genocide against the Uyghur Muslim minority in the Xinjiang region.