Mesut Ozil, Arsenal footballer, slammed the political situation in Xinjiang, China, on social media and his criticism has prompted an angry response from the Chinese authorities.
Ozil accused China of persecuting the predominantly Muslim Uyghur minority. Meanwhile, a Gunners match was pulled from the state TV schedule and Chinese football fans have reportedly burned Arsenal shirts in protest at the player’s comments.
In return, he has been deleted from Chinese versions of the Pro Evolution Soccer 2020 video game. US-listed Chinese internet company NetEase said it removed Ozil from the game due to his "extreme comment about China".
The European Parliament strongly condemned that hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and ethnic Kazakhs are being sent to political “re-education camps” based on a system of predictive policing, in a resolution adopted on Thursday.
The Members of the European Parliament (MEP) urged the Chinese government to immediately end the practice of arbitrary detentions without any charge, trial or conviction for criminal offence and to immediately and unconditionally release all detained persons, including this year’s laureate of the Sakharov Prize, Ilham Tohti.
Arbitrary Detention of Uyghurs, Muslims
There is solid information that Uyghurs and other primarily Muslim ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang province are subject to arbitrary detention, torture, egregious restrictions on religious practice and extensive digitized surveillance, MEPs argue.
They call on the Chinese authorities to give independent journalists and international observers free access to Xinjiang province to examine the situation on the ground.
MEPs also express their deep concern regarding reports about Uyghurs abroad being harassed by the Chinese authorities in order to compel them to inform against other Uyghurs, return to Xinjiang or remain silent about the situation there, sometimes by detaining their family members.
Pressure has been increasing on Beijing, after a recent leak of classified documents (China cables). They appear to confirm that the Chinese government has detained more than a million Muslims, mostly Uyghurs, in “re-education camps” in the north-western region of Xinjiang. The Chinese authorities alleged the “vocational training centers” were being used to combat violent religious extremism.
The Chinese government has justified its extreme measures as necessary to prevent religious “extremism” and what they claim are “terrorist activities”. Their stance on Xinjiang’s ethnic minorities has hardened since a series of violent incidents in the capital Urumqi in 2009 and the knife attacks at Kunming railway station in southwest China in 2014.
This hardly justifies the arbitrary detention of hundreds of thousands of people. In fact, UN experts concluded last month that China’s policies in Xinjiang were actually likely to “worsen any security risk”.
The persecution of Xinjiang’s Muslims has intensified since a regulation passed in 2017 meant people could be labelled “extremist” for reasons such as refusing to watch public TV programmes or having an “abnormal” beard. Wearing a veil or headscarf, regular prayer, fasting or avoidance of alcohol can also be considered “extremist” under the regulation.
Ozil Abandoned by Arsenal
While Arsenal have been criticized for not speaking out in support of Ozil, companies do not technically have a responsibility to denounce human rights violations.
Yet China’s attempts to impose its powerful censorship abroad must be resisted. Ozil has taken an important stand in speaking out in support of those facing brutal persecution in Xinjiang – and his intervention has raised global awareness of one of the gravest human rights crises of our time.
Arsenal are entitled to remain silent, but Ozil’s right to freedom of expression must be preserved.
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