Arsenal Mesut Ozil's German footballer, whose comments on the Uighur Muslim minority angered Beijing, has been removed from Chinese versions of the popular game Pro Evolution Soccer (PES), said its distributor, Thursday, December 19.
Friday, the no 10 of the Gunners had violently condemned on social networks China's systematic policy of repression and mass detention against the Muslim Uighur minority in Xinjiang (north-west). "Korans are burned … destroyed mosques … prohibited Islamic schools … religious intellectuals killed one after the other … Brothers sent by force to camps", was outraged Ozil on Twitter and Instagram.
“Muslims remain silent. We can't hear their voices "he added in his message, with the flag of what Uighur separatists call East Turkestan in the background.
The large group specialized in video games NetEase, which distributes in China on mobile the very popular Pro Evolution Soccer, announced in a press release that it removed Mesut Ozil from the game due to its "Extreme comments". "These words shocked the sensitivity of Chinese fans and violated the spirit of love and peace of the sport", said NetEase. "We do not understand, do not accept and do not forgive this comment", added the Chinese group listed in the United States.
Broadcast of a scheduled game
Arsenal distanced itself from its Turkish offensive midfielder on Saturday, saying the club had "Always adhered to the principle of not getting involved in politics".
A position that did not prevent the Chinese public channel CCTV from programming the broadcast of the match between the London team and Manchester City on Sunday. The PPTV streaming platform did the same.
China has been hit repeatedly by attacks attributed to Uighur activists, including in 2014, during stabbing attacks at Kunming station in the southwest of the country (31 dead) and the explosive against a market in Urumqi (39 dead), the capital of Xinjiang.
Human rights groups, researchers and the United States accuse Beijing of interning up to one million Muslims, mainly Uighurs, in "political re-education" camps in the region. Beijing denies this figure and speaks of vocational training centers, designed to help people find employment and keep them away from the temptation of Islamism and terrorism.
The Uighurs are one of the 56 ethnic groups identified in China. Mainly Muslim, speaking for the most part a language related to Turkish, they constitute just under half of the 25 million people living in Xinjiang.
Sakharov Prize: Beijing refuses to say if Uighur Ilham Tohti is alive
Beijing qualified, Thursday, December 19, of "Terrorist" Ilham Tohti, a Uighur scholar imprisoned in China, and refused to say whether the one who received the Sakharov Prize from the European Parliament was alive or not.
A former economics professor in Beijing, Mr. Tohti, 50, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2014 after a trial that sparked outrage from foreign governments and international organizations. The European Parliament awarded the intellectual Sakharov Human Rights Prize in late October and demanded his immediate release.
Ilham Tohti’s daughter Jewher Ilham received the award on Wednesday in her father’s name on Wednesday. She indicated that " not even (know) if he's still alive ", the last visit of a family member in 2017.
When questioned about this, a spokesperson for Chinese diplomacy, Geng Shuang, refused to answer in front of journalists. "What I do know is that Ilham Tohti is a criminal convicted by a Chinese court according to the law", did he declare.
Our articles on the "China Cables" survey
In partnership with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), The world and 16 international media reveal in detail the operation of the repression of Uighurs by the Chinese regime. This information was obtained by the leak of secret documents from Beijing.
