A social media post on Uighurs in detention has sparked questions about content moderation on the Chinese video-sharing service TikTok.
A Muslim American high school student from New Jersey posted a video on TikTok which begins as a makeup tutorial for curling eyelashes before talking about the mass detention of Muslim Uighurs in Chinese government-run camps.
Feroza Aziz says she received no communication about why she was blocked from accessing her TikTok account after posting the video.
Ms Aziz she chose to use the make-up tutorial as a pretext to avoid triggering detection from TikTok's moderators.
"So I say that so TikTok doesn't take down my videos," she explains in a follow-up video posted on Twitter.
Ms Aziz continues in her lash-curling video to explain why the detention of Uighurs is important to her, telling viewers the suffering must end.
She compared the plight of Muslim Uighurs to the Holocaust, accusing China's government of putting them in concentration camps.
"People that go into these concentration camps don't come back alive," she said.
"This is another Holocaust, yet no one is talking about it.
"Please. Be aware. Please spread awareness."
The Chinese-owned social media app earlier this month refused to send a representative to testify at a US congressional hearing tasked with examining the tech industry's ties to the Chinese government.
The platform was bought by Beijing-based Bytedance for US$1 billion in 2017. The merger transaction is being reviewed by the US government for any national security implications.
A spokesperson from TikTok denied any attempt to politically censor video content on detained Uighurs.
The spokesperson says Ms Aziz was blocked from accessing her TikTok account because of a previous video post which led moderators to suspend her account and the mobile device used to access the account.
"TikTok does not moderate content due to political sensitivities. In this case, the user's previous account and associated device were banned after she posted a video of Osama Bin Laden, which is a violation of TikTok's ban on content regarding terrorists," a statement from the company said.
Ms Aziz set up a new TikTok account but was unaware of the ban on the use of her device.
The company said users are not told the specific reason why their videos are removed, but they have the option to appeal the decision.
On November 15, Ms Azis posted the video which triggered the ban of her previous TikTok account. It was a video which she describes as a satire about the racism faced by Muslim women.
The video featured Ms Aziz singing in front of a series of men she suggested were attractive, concluding with a shot of Osama bin Laden's face held for less than a second as the punchline.
She said she felt the block by TikTok was a disproportionate reaction to what she considered a harmless joke.
“As Muslims, we’re ridiculed every day, so that was me making a joke to cope with the racism we face on a daily basis,” she told the Washington Post.
“I’ve been told to go marry a terrorist, go marry bin Laden, so I thought: ‘Let me make a joke about this. We shouldn’t let these things get to us.’"
The video on the detention of Uighurs is still available on TikTok and has clocked up more than 500,000 views. It has also been posted to other social media platforms.
Ms Aziz said she still cannot access her account on her phone and she is concerned about how TikTok's moderation rules affect what users can see.
"TikTok ain’t slick. They’re scared," she posted in an Instagram story.
She said she is not going to be deterred from being outspoken online.
"Spreading awareness does wonders. 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 subsequent video on Twitter.
The leak of two tranches of Chinese government documents earlier this month reveals that the mass detention of Muslim Uighurs is for forced indoctrination rather than what the government says is job re-training.
About one million people - mostly Muslim Uighurs - are detained in China's far western autonomous region of Xinjiang.
