All ten South Africans detained by authorities in China have been released, with five due to jet back into South Africa on Friday, a week after being apprehended on suspicion of viewing propaganda material in their hotel rooms. This comes after fruitful negotiations between local government and their counterparts in China, who initially agreed to release nine of the 20 member tour group taken in for questioning by authorities. Several members of the group are suspected of using the internet to view videos pertaining to a “banned group” within the country.

A further four British nationals were released on Wednesday, and returned to the U.K the following day. There has yet to be any clarification from the Chinese government as to the contents of the video the individuals are suspected of viewing, or which group it pertains to.

One of the organisations assisting the families of those held is local relief group, Gift of the Givers. Organisation head, Dr. Imtiaz Sooliman said conflicting reports from both the media and China itself were leading to a lack of clarity on whether the so called ‘banned-group’ was a ‘terrorist organisation’, or simply related to some form of anti-Chinese propaganda.

“They (authorities) spoke about different things; links to terror groups, and one linked to a banned organisation. Finally they said they were watching propaganda videos, and somebody has now turned that around and said they were watching terrorist videos. We are not sure what the correct information is,” he said.

His own suspicions were that because the trip coincided with the Islamic month of Ramadan, it was likely some members in the group were simply watching video recitations of the Holy Quran, or some other form of religious content. Due to Chinese sensitivity regarding issues in its western province of Xinjiang, where authorities hold fears that the local Uigher Muslims may be being driven towards radicalism, it was possible Islamic material was being misinterpreted.

“People who don’t know Arabic or understand the language, the moment they here Arabic it immediately comes in their mind that this is related to al-Qaeda or some other terrorist group,” he suggested.

The incident has stoked mass media attention, particular due to the fact that charges were never laid, despite more than a week in detention. This has further fueled media speculation on the nature of the arrests. But Sooliman also suspected the intense media scrutiny could be attributed to China’s questionable human right’s record, as well as its well-publicised control of information that filters down to its masses.

The arrests have brought about some comparisons with the detention of Egyptian-born South African scholar, Sheikh Abdul Salam Jad Bassiouni, who has been held in a Cairo-prison in Egypt since December. Whilst South African authorities have acted swiftly in the release of those held in China, there has been little progress from government in acquiring Bassiouni’s release.

At the stage when media reports first emerged about the scholar’s ordeal, Sooliman and his organisation were conducting relief efforts in Nepal, and were thus unable to get involved in any release efforts. Sooliman also noted that at the time of his return, the Department of International Relations (Dirco) had already set up a committee to address the issue.

“We didn’t want to interfere. I told them at that point it wasn’t appropriate to help them discuss, because in any case we would not be able to discuss directly with the Egyptian government…Because a government took Sheikh Bassiouni, the negotiations had to be government to government,” he explained, highlighting why GOTG were not currently involved in the Chinese negotiations either.

Sooliman was keen to stress that the names of those detained would not be released to the public until the families were properly consulted on the matter. VOC (Mubeen Banderker)