A Republican congressman says NBC is refusing to air his ad during Olympics coverage Monday night spotlighting American corporations who are sponsoring what the TV spot describes as the Chinese Communist Party-hosted “Genocide Games.”
Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., said in an interview Monday the ad featuring NBA player and China nemesis Enes Kanter Freedom had been scheduled to run. But the network now has insisted that he eliminate the displays of U.S. corporate logos.
“The world’s greatest athletic showcase, but just outside the show, genocide, rape, slave labor, and companies are drunk on Chinese dollars, entangled with communist dictators committing atrocities, and propping up these genocide games staged by the Chinese Communist Party,” Waltz says in the advertisement.
The Turkey-born NBA player says, “Stand for freedom, defund the dictators.”
The ad identifies corporate sponsors such as Proctor & Gamble, Visa and Coca-Cola, which are part of the Olympic Partner Program, the International Olympic Committee’s highest level of sponsorship.
See the ad:
NBC refused to air my Olympics ad with @EnesFreedom unless we censor U.S. corporate logos of the Genocide Games sponsors.
We won’t let them silence us.
Here’s the ad that NBC and the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t want you to see 👇 pic.twitter.com/0y35Z6KdZC
— Rep. Mike Waltz (@michaelgwaltz) February 5, 2022
China’s persecution of its Uyghur minority, notably in slave labor camps, has been a focus of human rights concerns. But the totalitarian state with global ambitions, which has reverted in recent years under Xi Jinping to Mao-era restrictions, also continues its persecution of other groups and movements that don’t comply, including the underground church.
Yaqiu Wang, a senior China researcher for Human Rights Watch, told Fox News Digital that with world leaders congratulating China during the opening ceremony, “there’s no doubt” that Beijing is using the Olympic Games as propaganda to legitimize the Communist Party government and its policies.
Waltz explained in an interview Monday with Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum that NBC basically carried out a “non-rejection rejection” of his ad, insisting he make “material changes” and take out the company logos.
Viewership of the opening ceremonies is down considerably compared to 2018 as many public figures call on Americans to not watch the games on TV.
Waltz said a staff member was at a diner in Florida where a customer asked if the Olympic Games could be put on the TV.
The waitress, according to the staffer’s account, said, “We don’t support genocide in China.”
A member of the Uyghur minority testified to Congress about her horrific experiences in a detention camp. She was detained in a camp three times, the first after the government took away her 2-month-old triplets. The oldest child died while in government custody.
She described being tortured by electrical shock that was so horrific she begged the officers to kill her rather than put her through it again.
She asked the officers to tell them what her crime was.
They said, “Being a Uyghur is a crime.”
See her testimony:
The CCP is using the Olympics as a propaganda tool to push the lie that Uyghurs are treated like everyone else in China. Here’s what life is really like for them: pic.twitter.com/vXmwmG0b0P
— Morgan Ortagus (@MorganOrtagus) February 5, 2022
On the last day of the Trump administration, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the U.S. had determined the Chinese Communist Party government was committing “ongoing” genocide against “the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other members of ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang.” Among the “crimes against humanity,” he said, was the “arbitrary imprisonment” of over 1 million people, who have suffered torture, forced sterilization and forced labor.
In December, Pompeo called on the U.S. to boycott the Beijing Olympics because of the regime’s “disregard for human rights at home and abroad,” evoking Adolf Hitler’s exploitation of the 1936 summer games in Berlin to showcase the Nazi regime.
Last October, China’s video-streaming giant Tencent shut down the live broadcast of a game between Kanter’s Boston Celtics and the New York Knicks after the Celtics player posted a video on Twitter describing Chinese President Xi Jinping as a “brutal dictator” and calling for the independence of Tibet.
In November, Kanter proudly changed his name to Enes Kanter Freedom to celebrate becoming an American citizen.
He told CNN the name change reflected the “fight” for freedom he has waged throughout his life after growing up under an oppressive regime.
“Here [in the U.S.] there is freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of the press,” he said. “I didn’t have any of those with Turkey.”
Kanter also has called Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan a “dictator.” In 2019, Turkish authorities filed an international arrest warrant, accusing him of allying with groups that tried to overthrow the Erdogan regime in 2016. He denies the allegations.
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