TikTok accused of banning viral ‘makeup tutorial’ video on China's Muslims

TikTok user Feroza Aziz’s viral video started as a regular beauty tutorial.

“First thing you need to do is to grab your lash-curler, curl your lashes obviously,” Aziz said. 

She says, what followed next got her suspended from TikTok - a Chinese social media app that has recently been gaining immense popularity, especially in Asia.

“Now put it down, and use your phone you’re using right now to search what’s happening in China,” she said in the video, widely shared on other social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

“They’re getting concentration camps, storing innocent Muslims in there, separating families from each other, kidnapping them, murdering them, kidnapping them,” she continued as she held her eyelash curler to her eye. 

“This is another holocaust, yet no one is talking about it… So, you can grab your eyelash curler again…,” she continued.

Aziz later shared screenshots showing that her video had been marked as sensitive content and her account temporarily suspended due to multiple violations of TikTok’s community guidelines. 

Aziz then began sharing the eyelash curling tutorial video and other follow-up videos on Twitter and Instagram. 

“TikTok ain’t slick. They’re scared,” she said in an Instagram story. 

“TikTok took down my video, but anyway…Spreading awareness does wonder. We got the UN to step up and help Sudan because we spread awareness - we can do the same for China,” she said in a follow-up video she shared on Twitter. 

TikTok denies suspending Aziz's account due to her comments on China. The company's spokesperson told TRT World in an email that a previous account and her associated device belonging to Aziz had been banned after she posted a video violating TikTok's ban on content that includes imagery related to terrorist organizations.

"TikTok does not moderate content due to political sensitivities...Another account of hers, @getmefamouspartthree, and its videos – including the eyelash video in question – were not affected and the video continues to receive views," the statement read.

The company didn't respond to a question regarding the timing of the decision to suspend Aziz's first account, which became inaccessible only after her eyelash video went viral.

China has been accused of a brutal crackdown on its Muslim minority, especially in the last three years.

Reports say a million Muslims, mostly Uighurs from Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, in the northwest of the country, are currently held in detention camps without trials.

The Chinese government says that they are simply education centres set up to prevent extremism. Recently leaked secret China cables detail dozens of pages containing how Beijing executes its strategy including monitoring people, forcing inmates to memorise the ideology, and forcing repentance and confessions in high-security prisons.

The Chinese officials also determine if inmates, who are separated from their families, will be allowed to see their families after their release.

Another report in early November also said Muslim women whose husbands have been kept in the internment camps are forced to share their beds with male government officials as part of the government’s surveillance programme ‘Pair up and become a family’.

Editor's Note: This story was updated on November 27 to include a statement from TikTok denying that suspended the account or removed the video.