Worthy Christian News > Christian > Black pastors say Nike must stop supporting BLM and must cut ties with China over Uyghur minority oppression

Black pastors say Nike must stop supporting BLM and must cut ties with China over Uyghur minority oppression

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – A coalition of several hundred pastors and clergy of color sent a letter to the CEO and President of sportswear giant Nike Thursday, demanding he stop the company’s support for the “anti-Christian” Black Lives Matter movement and sever Nike’s ties with China and Chinese oppression of the Uyghur minority population, PJ Media reports. In their letter to John Donahoe, the coalition called Conservative Clergy of Color said: “We have watched with sadness and frustration as the country we love has been torn apart by violence and looting. You have been happy to play into the hands of anarchists at home and ignore slavery abroad.”

Speaking a press conference introducing the coalition, Bishop Aubrey Shines read from the letter to Donahoe and said: “Nike is on record supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. A multi-billion dollar company is funneling funds into an organization whose only objective is to destroy America as we know it… This civil terror, perpetrated and lead by the Black Lives Matter movement, has turned American against American and possibly set race relations back decades.”

“Black Lives Matter, a movement run by anti-Christian, self-proclaimed Marxists, hijacked legitimate calls for police reform and turned it to their own ends,” the letter explains. “This is not a group interested in constructive change; through their vicious campaign to defund police and silence anyone who disagrees with them, they have destroyed livelihoods and gotten innocent children killed. It is antithetical to the nonviolence that Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement stood for.”

Then, referring to Nike’s use of factories in China to make its products, the letter continued: “At this very moment, millions of ethnic Uighurs are languishing in ‘reeducation’ camps in western China. They are rounded up for being a minority and forbidden from practicing their faith while being forced to work as slaves in factories. These factories make products for your company that are worn and promoted by dozens of players in various athletic leagues. Yet while this atrocity plays out at the hands of the Communist Chinese government, you have been silent.”

Therefore, the coalition stated: “We demand that you immediately sever all business ties with China and acknowledge the suffering of the Uighur people. We demand you end your support to the violent Black Lives Matter movement and any affiliated causes.”