A TikTok post by a young lady, a pretense to offer eyelash curling recommendation whereas actually condemnatory China’s suppression on Muslims in Xinjiang, has gone viral on the Chinese-owned app that has been defendant of censoring anti-Beijing content.
The clip by United States teen Feroza Aziz, who describes herself as “17 just a Muslim”, had countless views across many social media platforms by Wednesday.
But Aziz said she has been blocked from posting on the massively well-liked video platform TikTok for a month when uploading Sunday’s clip slamming China, a claim controversial by the app.
Human rights teams and outdoors consultants say over one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities are rounded up in a network of internment camps across the fractious region of Xinjiang.
China, when initially denying the camps existed, describes them as vocational schools geared toward dampening the attract of Islamist extremism and violence through education and job coaching.
Aziz starts her video telling viewers: “The very first thing you wish to do is grab your lash curler.”
However, she presently changes the topic, saying: “Then you are going to place it down and use the phone you are using right away to look what is happening in China, however they are getting concentration camps, throwing innocent Muslims in there, separating families from one another, kidnapping them, murdering them, raping them, forcing them to eat pork, forcing them to drink, forcing them to convert”.
“This is another Holocaust, nevertheless nobody is talking about it. Please bear in mind, please spread awareness in Xinjiang right away,” she adds, before returning to the eyelash curling tutorial.
A previous account owned by Aziz, reportedly from New Jersey, was blocked by TikTok over another alleged violation, but the app denied the current profile had been frozen.
“TikTok doesn’t moderate content due to political sensitivities,” a spokesperson told our correspondent.
“In this case, the user’s previous account and associated device were banned when she posted a video of Osama bin Laden, which is a violation of TikTok’s ban on content that includes imagery related to terrorist organizations. Her new account and its videos, together with the video in question, weren’t affected.”
As of Wednesday morning, the post had over 1.5 million views and 501,900 likes, and 600,000 comments.
Two follow-up videos in which Aziz once more addressed the Xinjiang camps had each received over 7,000 views.
The eyelash-curling clip had reached far more people on Twitter, with versions of the same video receiving over 6.5 million views on Twitter.
Aziz told Buzzfeed: “As a Muslim lady, I’ve always been oppressed and seen my people be oppressed, and always I have been into human rights.”
