Arsenal FC star laments over Uighur Muslims persecution, Chinese government blames fake news
Abdulmumeen Sulaiman
Arsenal star, Mesut Ozil, has lamented over the persecution of Muslim minority in China. He shared an earnest prayer for the Uighur Muslims who are facing a mass detention in northwest China.
His comment has slammed the undue silence of the international community and Islamic countries alike who have not shown any genuine concern to the plights of Uighur Muslims in the hand of Chinese government.
In a prayer written in Turkish language and shared on his Instagram handle @MesutOzil1088, Ozil in part challenged the Muslim brethren who have ignored the plights of the Uighur Muslims.
Ozil prayed: “Oh Lord, please help our brethren and sisters in Eastern Turkestan”.
The plights of the Uighur Muslims are not hidden from the public eyes and, given the Media attention the situation has garnered in the west, international community and Muslim countries cannot feign ignorance of these plights.The silence of these bodies over the situation is thus questionable.
In his prayer, Ozil in part asked, “Don’t they know that later years later what our brothers and sisters will remember is not the torture of the oppressors but the silence of their Muslim brethren?”
It is a fact that since 2017, Uighur and other Muslim minority groups have been wrongfully detained in what the Chinese government called reeducation center in the Xinjiang. Most of the people in the camps are detained without crimes.
About one million Uighur Muslims are reportedly detained in different detention camps in different parts of China and are made to undergo a process of proper reintegration into China society and culture. They are taught Chinese culture, dances, food and are even made to eat pork.
The people detained are being forcefully made to engage in practices that are against their religious belief, a development that makes Ozil concludes, “Despite all this, the Muslim community is mute.”
However, the Chinese government has denied the knowledge of the arbitrary detention and existence of the detention. Geng Shuang, the Chinese Foreign Affairs Spokesman has claimed that the German midfielder has been “influenced by untruthful remarks”. He therefore invited Ozil to visit the China and “have a look” for himself.
“Mesut Ozil was deceived by fake news before criticising China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims,” he said.
