Beijing reacts to soccer star’s Uyghur tweet, cancels Arsenal match screening
On Friday, we noted the tweet by third-generation Turkish-German professional soccer player Mesut Özil showing the flag of East Turkestan (the name of a short-lived independent Uyghur state) and slogans in Turkish about the oppression of Uyghurs. Despite Arsenal’s rush to distance itself from remarks on social media platform Weibo (in Chinese), the response from Beijing has been predictably indignant:
- China Central Television canceled the live screening of a Sunday match between Özil’s team Arsenal and Manchester City, replacing it with a prerecorded match between Tottenham and Wolverhampton.
- Özil “seems to be blindfolded by some fake news and his judgment was clouded by falsehoods,” said foreign ministry spokesperson Gěng Shuǎng 耿爽 at a regular press briefing today. He went on to give the Party line about how the Chinese government protects freedom of religious beliefs, “the Uyghur ethnic group included,” and how the measures taken “to fight terrorism and maintain stability in Xinjiang are endorsed by local people of various ethnic groups.” Geng also invited “Özil to visit Xinjiang and see the place with his own eyes.”
- Some Chinese soccer fans burned Arsenal shirts (per the Guardian). Nationalist rag the Global Times published a story (in Chinese) on Özil’s tweet, quoting officials from the Chinese Football Association who say Özil has “not only hurt many Chinese fans, but also hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.” Another opinion piece (English, Chinese) written in the Global Times trademark whiny style says that the soccer star “is not helping the Muslim world, but instead he is being used as a puppet by Western anti-China forces.”
- This might not be as bad as the NBA affair for Arsenal: A Turkish-German man who plays for an English team does not provide as clear a target as the American-only NBA and its small numbers of teams. Also, per Quartz (porous paywall): Because of censorship, “many people didn’t know why exactly they were meant to be upset at Özil in the first place.”
- Who stands to lose money? From the Washington Post:
Arsenal is one of several teams owned by Stan Kroenke, whose company also owns the Los Angeles Rams, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, Colorado Rapids and other teams. Arsenal toured China in 2017 for a preseason promotion and also owns a chain of team-themed restaurants in the country. Although Arsenal does not have as big of a presence as Real Madrid or Manchester United in the world’s most populous country, it does fear putting off big-spending sponsors and a Chinese fan base.
Related:
“The Xinjiang regional government in China’s far west is deleting data, destroying documents, tightening controls on information and has held high-level meetings in response to leaks of classified papers on its mass detention camps for Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities,” reports the Associated Press.
“A prominent Uyghur historian who disappeared in 2017 has been confirmed jailed in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, according to his U.S.-based daughter, who said his sentence likely stemmed from a book he published three years earlier,” reports Radio Free Asia.
“I took a business trip to China. Then I got shackled to a chair.” That’s the title of an article in the Vancouver Star based on stories of Uyghurs in exile in Turkey.
