[damq]

The comment you're replying to is suggesting a way to prevent a PR crisis like this, not a way to escape an ongoing crisis.

It's hard to deny that there would be a much smaller PR issue here if the player had been prevented from voicing any opinion on Hong Kong in the first place.

[MBCook]

But that wouldn’t be neutral either. It would clearly be favoring a side (and may have backfired when it came out).