TikTok apologises for removing viral Xinjiang clip

Chinese-owned app TikTok has admitted it briefly removed a viral video that condemned Beijing's crackdown on Muslims in Xinjiang and apologised to the US teen who posted the clip.

In a post that has now been seen 1.6 million times, Feroza Aziz begins talking about eyelash curling but quickly switches to decrying China's mass detention of ethnic Uighurs and other minorities in its far northwest.

Aziz said this week that she had been blocked from posting on the app for a month after uploading the clip, then noted on Twitter on Wednesday that the video had been taken down.

As her posts on various platforms racked up millions of combined views, TikTok, which has previously been accused of censoring content that Beijing does not like, insisted it had not blocked her and that her videos were still available.

But on Wednesday the company admitted having temporarily removed the video "due to a human moderation error".

The company said the video was restored around 50 minutes later after "a senior member of our moderation team identified the error and reinstated it immediately."
"We would like to apologize to the user for the error on our part."