Wed 27 November 2019:
An American teenager’s clever TikTok video managed to sneak in banned commentary on the topic of China’s concentration camps and torture programs for Uighur Muslims. The teen’s video was bookended with beauty tips, and went viral with 1.4M+ views and ~500,000 likes. Many copycats. China didn’t like it.
The post appears to be about beauty tips at its start – but the young woman then changes tack to ask her viewers to raise awareness of what she describes as a “another Holocaust”.
Feroza Aziz later tweeted that TikTok had blocked her from posting new content, as a result.
TikTok has disputed this.
GUYS NO JOKE THIS TUTORIAL HELPED ME SO MUCH PLEASE WATCH IT pic.twitter.com/BuITSebOu6
— saltys backup (@soIardan) November 24, 2019
Part three to getting longer lashes #tiktok #muslims #muslimmemes #Uyghurmuslims #freepalestine pic.twitter.com/OoFpDpYPvj
— feroza.x (@x_feroza) November 25, 2019
Here is part two to my lash video on how to get longer lashes! Please share #tiktok #muslim #muslimmemes #spreadawareness pic.twitter.com/pT8gBlP3QS
— feroza.x (@x_feroza) November 25, 2019
“TikTok does not moderate content due to political sensitivities,” a spokesman told BBC News. Although, Douyin, the Chinese version of the app, on which Ms Aziz’s posts would not have appeared, is politically censored.
The company had permanently banned one of Ms Aziz’s old TikTok accounts on, 15 November, for posting an unrelated video that had broken its rules on terrorism-related material, he said.
As an additional measure, it had then blocked her smartphone, on 25 November, but that too had been unrelated to her posts about China.
“Her new account and its videos, including the eyelash video in question, were not affected and continue to receive views,” the spokesman added.
BBC News has contacted Ms Aziz and her family for comment.
For its part, the Chinese government has consistently said the camps in question offer voluntary education and training, despite evidence to the contrary.
Ms Aziz posted three videos about China’s treatment of the Uighur Muslims, between Sunday and Monday.
The first has been watched more than 1.4 million times and “liked” nearly 500,000 times on the app.
A copy uploaded to Twitter by other TikTok users has attracted a further five million views.
And further copies have been posted to YouTube and Instagram.
Part of the videos’ appeal is they are presented as a deliberate attempt to circumvent supposed censorship by TikTok’s Beijing-based owner, Bytedance.
Ms Aziz bookends her critical comments with talk about to make eyelashes look longer.
“I say that so TikTok doesn’t take down my videos,” she explains in one of the recordings.
While the version of TikTok used in mainland China does censor criticism of the Chinese Communist Party, the company says it does not take the same action against posts to the separate library of user-generated content it offers elsewhere.
And it notes other clips about the mistreatment of Uighurs within Chinese camps have been allowed to remain on its international platform, although they do not tend to get anywhere close to the amount of attention Ms Aziz has generated.
The 17-year-old’s videos were posted the same week BBC Panorama revealed how leaked documents detailed some of the measures used to brainwash hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the western region of Xinjiang.
They undermine China’s claims attendance at the camps is voluntary and designed to counter extremism.
China’s UK ambassador has dismissed the documents as “fake news”.
Ms Aziz provides her own list of abuses.
“Spreading awareness does wonders,” she says.
“We can reach millions across the world [and] reach those with the power to do something about it.”
The BBC has also confirmed that Ms Aziz is in control of a Twitter account created earlier this month. She has tweeted that TikTok has given her a one-month suspension and said that “China is terrified of the news [about the camps] spreading”.
Others have picked up on her posts, including a member of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank, who called Ms Aziz’s use of TikTok “creatively subversive”.
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