Nike Is Being Boycotted And Here's Why

The Nike ad which has gathered over 53 million views on YouTube 'You Can't Stop Us' has received a negative reaction by some, particularly by the Muslim community.

The ad is a montage of people and athletes of different ethnicities, colors and body shapes taking part in various sports from football to gymnastics. Emotional music plays over the top while the voice-over serves to inspire and empower the audience with words like "we are never alone" and "when we are held back we will go further and harder."

However the 4 second section of the ad which has attracted particular debate see's a Muslim niqabi* women on a skateboard transitioning into another skater waving a smoked out LGBTQ+ flag. The words "If we don't fit the sport, we'll change the sport" play over the top. OnePath Network, a popular YouTube channel which regularly produces Muslim content reacts to the ad in their most recent video named "Sorry Nike, this is just WRONG." The lady in the video says:

If you are trying to suggest that Muslims should somehow change our longstanding Islamic values to conform to today's liberal standards, you might be a little off." This does not come from a place of homophobia nor intolerance however specifically tying both groups together doesn't make any sense.

Beyond the 4 second clip there lies an even more serious reason for why some are choosing to boycott Nike and that is the brands involvement in Uighur forced labor. One YouTube comment with over 5K likes wrote:

"Nike really cares about people, except for the people manufacturing their products."

Uighur's are a Muslim minority ethnic group from China’s western Xinjiang region, there are currently an estimated 1.5 million Uighur's forced in the so called "re-education" camps. Information about these camps are very limited however there are reports of detainees being tortured, forcefully medicated, sterilized, and even forced to consume pork and alcohol. China denies the accusations and claims that these camps "offer vocational training and aim to fight terrorism and extremism." (The Guardian)

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) estimates that 80,000 Uighur's were transferred to work in factories in various Chinese provinces between 2017 and 2019 as well as other Turkic and Muslim minorities, some of which were transferred straight from the prison camps. The ASPI reported that the conditions in these factories "strongly suggest forced labor."

Major retailers are facing mounting pressure from over 180 organisations to cut ties with suppliers in Xinjiang among them are Nike, Adidas, Apple, Amazon and H&M. According to The Guardian, China is the biggest supplier of cotton in the world and 84 per cent of it is manufactured in the Xinjiang region. Therefore it is highly likely that the majority of fashion brands are complicit in the forced labor of Uighur's even if they aren't directly sourcing from China as this cotton is transported to other garment producing countries including Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The organisation Save Uighur campaigns to spread awareness of the injustices happening in China by encouraging the boycotting of Chinese products as well as spreading hashtags such as #SaveUighur.

The twitter handle @KhaledBeydoun tweeted out last week:

did Uighur Muslim women forced to work in the labor camps in #China make these Nike headscarves? 2 billion people would like to know.

Niqabi* A Muslim woman who wears a niqab also known as a face veil