Mesut Özil row: China's Arsenal fans burn shirts in anger at Xinjiang post
Player, who has 4 million followers on Chinese microblog Weibo, is called a ‘dirty ant’ for attacking China Lily Kuo in Beijing Mon 16 Dec 2019 06.50 GMT Last modified on Mon 16 Dec 2019 07.07 GMT Shares 28 Mesut Ozil of Arsenal criticised China for its treatment of Uighurs. Photograph: Javier García/BPI/REX/Shutterstock Chinese football fans have burned Arsenal football shirts and called on the club to fire star player Mesut Ozil after he publicly criticised China’s treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang. On Friday, Özil, who is usually quiet on social media, posted a message on his Instagram profile describing Uighurs in the far north-western region of China as “warriors who resist persecution”. Posting the words against the backdrop of the flag of the short-lived East Turkestan republic, an area that is now Chinese-controlled Xinjiang , he wrote: “[In China] Qurans are burned, mosques were closed down, Islamic