Football: Arsenal-Manchester City game removed from broadcast schedule by China state TV - Report
Ethnic Uighur boys hold placards with the images of English soccer club Arsenal's midfielder Mesut Ozil
China'sstatebroadcaster CCTVon SundayremovedArsenal's Premier LeaguegameagainstManchesterCityfromitsbroadcastschedulefollowing Mesut Ozil's messages that criticised the country's policy towards its Muslim Uighur minority.
The Global Times newspaper said on its Twitter account on Sunday that CCTVtook the decision after midfielder Ozil's comments on Saturday had "disappointed fans and football governing authorities".
Ozil's posts called Uighurs "warriors who resist persecution" and criticised bothChina's crackdown and the silence of Muslims in response.
"(InChina) Qurans are burned, mosques were closed down, Islamic theological schools, madrasas were banned, religious scholars were killed one by one. Despite all this, Muslims stay quiet," Ozil, who is a Muslim, said in his posts.
AnArsenalspokesmantold Reuters that they had no officialstatement on the issue after CCTV's decision to show a tapedgamebetween Tottenham Hotspur and Wolverhampton Wanderers instead of the originally planned fixture.
CCTVdid not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Arsenalon Saturday tried to distance itselffromOzil's comments after he posted messages on Twitter and Instagram.
"The content he expressed is entirely Ozil's personal opinion," the official account ofArsenalsaid in a post onChina's Twitter-like Weibo platform.
"As a football club,Arsenalalways adheres to the principle of not being involved in politics."
The club's Twitter account did not have a post addressing Ozil's comments as of Sunday morning.
Replies toArsenal's Weibo post were angry, with one showing a shredded Ozil soccer jersey next to a pair of scissors and others demanding he be expelledfromthe club.
A search on Weibo for the hashtag translatable as "Ozil issues inappropriatestatement", which had been one of the top trending topics on the platform, returned no results on Saturday afternoon.
Weibo frequently censors discussion of sensitive topics, particularly amid a push by Beijing to clean up its internet.
The Chinese Football Association told government-backed news outlet, The Paper, on Saturday it was "outraged and disappointed" by Ozil's remarks, describing them as "inappropriate".
"Ozil's comments are undoubtedly hurtful to the Chinese fans who closely follow him, and at the same time, his comments also hurt the feelings of Chinese people. This is something we cannot accept," the news outlet quoted an unnamed officialfromthe association as saying.
The United Nations and humanrights groups estimate that between 1 million and 2 million people, mostly ethnic Uighur Muslims, have been detained in harsh conditions in Xinjiang as part of what Beijing calls an anti-terrorism campaign.
Chinahas repeatedly denied any mistreatment of Uighurs.