US Tennis: Stop Supporting Genocide in Sudan

Craig Tiley, CEO, US Tennis Association

Right now, as you read this, people are dying in Sudan. Not from a distant, inevitable disaster, but from a deliberate campaign of mass murder, rape, and starvation carried out by a paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The RSF could not sustain itself without weapons, money, and political cover from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

This is not a controversy or a matter of competing interpretations. The United States government has formally called out the RSF's genocide. The United Nations has labeled it genocide. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Refugees International have documented the flow of weapons to the killers organized by the UAE. Survivors have given testimony. The evidence is overwhelming and the death toll keeps rising.

And every year since 2012, the U.S. Tennis Association (USTA) has placed the Emirates logo, the logo of the UAE government's airline, at center court at the US Open. Every year, the USTA lends its reputation, its history, and the name of Billie Jean King to a relationship with a government that is bankrolling mass atrocities.

Genocide does not persist because of the killers alone. It persists because the world looks away. It persists when institutions that have the power to act, and the credibility to be heard, choose a sponsorship contract over a moral stand. The USTA is one of those institutions. It has a choice.

You have a choice too. Signing this petition is not symbolic. Petitions like this one have moved organizations before, and the USTA, of all institutions, was built on the idea that individuals willing to make a stand can change what the world accepts as normal. Billie Jean King refused to accept less than she was worth. She signed her name to that refusal. We are asking you to do the same.

Sign because silence is complicity. Sign because tennis has always meant more than a game. Sign because the people of Sudan deserve to know that somewhere in the world, someone saw what was happening and refused to look away.

For More Information:

Sponsored by
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No Business With Genocide
Washington, DC

To: Craig Tiley, CEO, US Tennis Association
From: [Your Name]

We, the undersigned members of the tennis community, fans, players, and concerned people from all over the world, address this petition to the leadership of the United States Tennis Association (USTA). We do so out of profound respect for the USTA's historic commitment to equality and human rights, and out of deep alarm at a sponsorship arrangement that places that legacy in direct contradiction with its stated values.

I. The USTA's Pioneering Legacy of Equality

The USTA occupies a singular place in the history of gender equality in sports. In 1973, the US Open became the first major sporting event in the world to offer equal prize money to men and women, a breakthrough won through the courageous advocacy of Billie Jean King, after whom the USTA's National Tennis Center in New York City is now named. The USTA has since celebrated this milestone as central to its identity, naming the venue in King's honor in 2006 and dedicating the 50th anniversary of equal pay in 2023 to recognizing "Champions of Equality."

This legacy is not merely ceremonial. It reflects a founding conviction that sport is, in Billie Jean King's own words, "a microcosm of society" — and that the USTA has an "amazing opportunity to lead and let people think about things." We ask the USTA to honor that conviction now.

II. The UAE's Role in the Sudan Genocide

Since April 2023, a catastrophic civil war has engulfed Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group with deep roots in the militias that carried out the Darfur genocide two decades ago. The human cost has been staggering: over half of Sudan's population — some 25 million people — are in acute need of humanitarian assistance. Survivors have described mass executions, systematic sexual violence, and the deliberate targeting of civilians.

The United Arab Emirates has been identified by multiple credible international bodies as a primary enabler of the RSF's atrocities:

• Genocide determination: In early 2025, the United States government formally determined that the RSF has committed genocide in Sudan, including in the Darfur region.
• Arms shipments: Investigations by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN have documented the UAE exporting weapons — including Chinese-made artillery used in the siege of El Fasher and attacks on the Zamzam displacement camp — to the RSF, in breach of the UN arms embargo.
• UN findings: A UN fact-finding report in October 2025 classified RSF actions in El Fasher as showing the hallmarks of genocide. The RSF receives military, financial, and diplomatic support from the UAE.
• Congressional confirmation: U.S. Representatives Sara Jacobs and Senator Chris Van Hollen confirmed, following a Biden Administration briefing, that the UAE continued to provide weapons to the RSF in direct contradiction to its assurances to the United States government.
• ICC proceedings: Sudan filed a case at the International Criminal Court in 2025 accusing the UAE of complicity in genocide, with Sudan's representative stating that the "ongoing genocide would not be possible without the complicity of the UAE." The ICC Prosecutor assessed that crimes against humanity and war crimes were committed in El Fasher.

III. The Conflict: Emirates Airline and the UAE Government

Emirates airline — the USTA's Official Airline Partner and a sponsor of the US Open since 2012 — is the flag carrier of the United Arab Emirates and is wholly owned by the UAE government through the Investment Corporation of Dubai. The airline is not a private entity operating independently of state policy; it is an arm of the same government that Amnesty International, the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Refugees International, and the U.S. State Department have identified as actively enabling the RSF's genocidal campaign.

In August 2024, the USTA and Emirates announced a renewed multi-year partnership, the 13th consecutive year of the relationship, including a new "Force for Good" court refurbishment initiative. We do not dispute the value of community tennis programs. We submit that it is impossible to square a "Force for Good" branding with an airline whose government is simultaneously funding forces committing what the United States itself has called genocide.

IV. Our Call to Action

We call upon the USTA Board of Directors and executive leadership to take the following steps:

1. Immediately suspend the Emirates airline sponsorship pending a full ethical review of the USTA's relationship with UAE-linked entities.

2. Publicly acknowledge the conflict between this partnership and the USTA's stated values of equality, inclusion, and human dignity.

3. Establish a formal policy prohibiting sponsorship arrangements with state-owned entities of governments credibly determined to be complicit in genocide or crimes against humanity.

4. Use the USTA's platform to call for accountability for the perpetrators of the Sudan genocide and for humanitarian access to affected populations.

5. Redirect sponsorship resources to partners whose values are consistent with those the USTA has championed for over fifty years.

Billie Jean King fought for equality not merely on the tennis court, but as a demonstration of what sport could mean for the broader struggle for human dignity. The USTA honored that vision when it was bold enough to act in 1973. We ask for that same boldness today.

The people of Sudan — more than 25 million in crisis, hundreds of thousands killed or displaced, countless women subjected to systematic rape as a weapon of war — deserve to know that the world's most storied tennis organization will not accept their oppressors' money as a matter of business as usual.

We urge the USTA to stand on the right side of history — as it has done before — and end its partnership with Emirates airline and the UAE government that stands behind it.