Arsenal midfielder Mesut Ozil, on Friday, condemned the Chinese government’s action of detaining the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang and criticised Muslim countries for not speaking up about the issue.
Taking to his official Twitter handle, Ozil wrote 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.”
#HayırlıCumalarDoğuTürkistan 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/dJgeK4KSIk
— Mesut Özil (@MesutOzil1088) December 13, 2019
The 31-year-old footballer wrote the words on a blue background with a white crescent moon which the Uighur separatists consider the flag of what they call East Turkestan.
Ozil further added, “The Muslims are silent. Their voice is not heard.”
The player with Turkish origin also criticised the western media and said, “what will be remembered years later would not be the torture by the tyrants but the silence of their Muslim brothers.”
China has set up a vast network of camps in Xinjiang to detain the Uighur population to reflect the majority Han culture. Right groups predict more than one million Uighurs and population of other Muslim ethnic minorities have been put up in the camps.
Meanwhile, Arsenal have distanced themselves from Ozil’s comments in a bid to, what many believe, have their vast commercial interest in China intact.
In a Chinese statement released on the club’s official handle on Twitter-like platform Weibo, Arsenal said, “The content published is Ozil’s personal opinion. As a football club, Arsenal has always adhered to the principle of not involving itself in politics.”