Star Premier League Player Mesut Özil Criticizes China Over Uighur Repression German-Turkish midfielder lashed out on social media at Muslim countries for failing to support ethnic group Arsenal’s Mesut Özil is a devout Muslim of Turkish heritage. Photo: Steven Paston/Zuma Press By Joshua Robinson in Paris and David Gauthier-Villars in Istanbul Dec. 13, 2019 4:25 pm ET German soccer star Mesut Özil became one of the few prominent global voices to call out China over its treatment of ethnic-minority Muslims, while also accusing the Muslim world of ignoring the plight of the Uighur community. Mr. Özil, who is a devout Muslim of Turkish heritage, made the allegations in a social-media post on Friday, 48 hours before he was due to play his next match for Arsenal of the English Premier League. London-based Arsenal is one of the most popular soccer teams in China, with over 5 million followers on the social network Sina Weibo, a designated Chinese commercial office and plans for a chain of Arsenal-themed restaurants. China is also the single most lucrative foreign market for the Premier League, which is in the middle of a three-year, $700 million contract with China’s online-streaming service PPTV. Any Chinese blowback could cost the club and the league a fortune, as the NBA has already discovered. Mr. Özil’s statement came less than two months after a tweet by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey in support of the Hong Kong protesters led China’s state broadcaster to ban Rockets games from its airwaves. Related Video Free Speech vs. Chinese Market: U.S. Companies Face Tough Choice You may also like Up Next Free Speech vs. Chinese Market: U.S. Companies Face Tough Choice Backlash against the NBA sparked by a tweet in support of Hong Kong protesters shows how tricky it is to do business in China—and the difficult line companies must tread. Photo Composite: Crystal Tai “Qurans are being burned… Mosques are being closed... Muslim schools are being banned… Religious scholars are being killed one by one...” Mr. Özil wrote in a post to his 24.4 million followers on Twitter and 21.1 million followers on Instagram. “The followers of Mohammed are silent…They don’t raise their voices… Muslims are not showing solidarity…” There was no immediate public reaction from China. Around a million Uighurs are believed to be interned in camps by the Chinese state in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, according to human-rights groups. Arsenal, which played in China on preseason tour as recently as 2017, was quick to distance itself from its own player. “Following social media messages from Mesut Özil earlier today, Arsenal Football Club must make it clear that these are Mesut’s personal views,” the club said in a statement, also released on its Weibo page. “Arsenal is always apolitical as an organisation.” The Premier League declined to comment. Mr. Özil, a 31-year-old World Cup winner, is one of the highest paid players in English soccer with a salary widely reported to exceed $20 million a year—and one of its most mysterious. Most of the time, his social-media presence is forcefully bland. But over the past two years, he has strayed from that public persona on two notable occasions. The first was to explain why he appeared in a controversial photo op with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in London in May 2018, alongside another German player of Turkish heritage, Ilkay Gündoğan. And in the summer of 2018, he quit the German national team citing “racism and disrespect” from the federation. Mr. Özil’s critical tweet on Friday appeared to encompass Turkey, even though Ankara has been one of the few Muslim governments to welcome Uighur refugees and voiced concerns about the situation in the Chinese province of Xinjiang. The apparent inclusion of Turkey in his criticism was surprising because Mr. Özil has been an ardent supporter of Mr. Erdogan, who acted as the best man at his wedding in Istanbul in June. Mr. Erdogan has strained to strike a balance in recent months between calls from the ultranationalist partner in his ruling alliance, who regards the Uighurs as Turkic kinsmen and has put their cause high on his agenda, and threats from Beijing to punish Turkey with economic sanctions. Representatives of the estimated 35,000 Uighurs living in Turkey say they are facing growing difficulties to renew their residency permits, while some are facing deportation. However, the Turkish Foreign Ministry elicited furious reactions from Beijing in February, when it denounced China’s mass-detention program of Uighurs, calling it “a great shame for humanity.” Write to Joshua Robinson at joshua.robinson@wsj.com and David Gauthier-Villars at David.Gauthier-Villars@wsj.com https://www.wsj.com/articles/star-p...9c772033fc8c7b99&reflink=share_mobilewebshare