Arsenal midfielder Mesut Ozil has been deleted from Chinese versions of the popular Pro Evolution Soccer mobile game, the title’s China distributor has said, as the fallout continued over his criticism of the country’s treatment of its Uighur minority.
US-listed Chinese Internet company NetEase said that it removed Ozil from the game due to his “extreme comment about China.”
Ozil, a German national of Turkish origin, condemned China’s crackdown on Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region in a tweet on Friday last week and criticized Muslim countries for failing to speak up about the alleged abuses.
Arsenal distanced themselves from his comments, while China said that his tweets were “untruthful” and that he was “deceived by fake news.”
Ozil had tweeted in Turkish: “Korans are being burnt... Mosques are being shut down... Muslim schools are being banned... Religious scholars are being killed one by one... Brothers are forcefully being sent to camps.”
HURTING FEELINGS
“The Muslims are silent. Their voice is not heard,” he wrote against a blue backdrop with a white crescent moon — the flag of “East Turkestan,” as many Uighur separatists call the Xinjiang region.
Shortly afterward, NetEase announced on its verified Chinese social media accounts that Ozil’s comments had “hurt the feelings of Chinese fans, and violated the sport’s spirit of love and peace.”
“We do not understand, accept or forgive this comment,” NetEase added.
China at first denied that the camps existed, but under growing pressure, later acknowledged them, saying that they were vocational training centers.
Following his comments, Chinese state television dropped plans to broadcast the Arsenal match on Sunday, and discussion of the topic has been heavily censored in China.
In a similar episode, China moved in October to punish the NBA’s Houston Rockets after its general manager Daryl Morey tweeted support for Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters.
WEST WEIGHS IN
Ozil has been praised on Twitter for speaking out, with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also weighing in this week.
“China’s Communist Party propaganda outlets can censor @MesutOzil1088 and @Arsenal’s games all season long, but the truth will prevail,” Pompeo wrote on Twitter, chastizing China for its “gross” infringements on the human rights of Uighurs.
Turkey, which shares linguistic and ethnic ties with the Uighurs, has been outspoken on the issue, but most Muslim-majority countries have been muted in the face of China’s commercial and diplomatic power.
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