PRESS RELEASE
Subject: Nomination of Enes Kanter Freedom for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize
For Immediate Release
Date: 22 February 2022
Contact: Enver Can, enver.can@web.de; +49-1738912048
The Ilham Tohti Initiative welcomes the nomination of U.S. Baskertball Star Enes Kanter Freedom for the Nobel Peace Prize 2022 and appreciates his work defending human rights, including his criticism of Chinese atrocities against the Uyghur and Tibetan and other oppressed peoples.
Enes Kanter Freedom (Born Enes Kanter; May 20, 1992) is a Swiss-born, ethnic-Turkish American professional basketball player who last played for the Boston Celtics in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He was selected as the third overall pick of the 2011 NBA draft by the Utah Jazz. A center, Freedom has played for five NBA teams since entering the league in 2011. He has represented the Turkish national team in international games. He became American citizen last November.
Kanter spoke out on what he called “cultural genocide” in Tibet, calling China’s leader Xi Jinping a “brutal dictator”… In a video statement (October 2021) he wore a “Freedom for Uyghur” T-Shirt and focusing on Uyghur people said:
“Right now as I speak this message, torture, rape, forced abortions, sterilizations, family separations, arbitrary detentions, concentration camps, political reeducation, forced labor … this is all happening right now to more than 1.8 million Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region in northwestern China,”.
“The Chinese government has been taking sweeping measures to crackdown on the Uyghur people simply because they embrace their own religion, their own culture, language, history and identity,” he continued. “The Uyghur region has become an open-air prison and surveillance state where freedoms are non-existent for the Uyghur people. The Chinese government has sent Uyghurs along with Kazaks, Tajiks and other Muslims groups to concentration camps for simply applying for a passport, for texting someone overseas or for believing in anything that does not align with the Chinese Communist Party’s agenda.”
Kanter said on Twitter: “Heartless Dictator of China, XI JINPING and the Communist Party of China. I am calling you out in front of the whole world. Close down the SLAVE labor camps and free the UYGHUR people! Stop the GENOCIDE, now! #FreeUyghurs”
Mr. Enver Can, President of the Ilham Tohti Initiative, welcomed Enes Kanter´s nomination for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, saying:
“We appreciate his nomination for the most prestigious human Rights and Freedom Award. We would like to express our gratitude of the Uyghur people for his wholehearted efforts defending human rights as the a voice of oppressed peoples”.