Readers beware: you should be careful which television shows you decide to watch or you could end up like one unfortunate retired British couple: in jail for watching a documentary about Genghis Khan. Hoosain Jacobs, 74, and his wife Tahira, 68, were arrested along with 18 other tourists on a sightseeing tour of China after they were accused of watching terrorist propaganda videos in their Ordos hotel room.
An Ordos foreign affairs official reported that he thought the group "looked at and propagated something about violence and terrorism."
How can you confuse the 13th century Mongolian leader with a bearded jihadist holding an AK? Chinese state media have yet to answer that question, simply saying, "All the detainees admitted to their illegal acts and repented," and that all 20 have now been deported.
Apparently local police got confused since they arrested the west London couple and kept them in jail for a week, ''in not good conditions'' according to a spokesman.
The group of 20 foreigners from South Africa, Britain and India, were traveling with a South African disaster relief organization called Gift of the Givers, which said that no one was notified about the arrests until 48 hours after the tourists were detained without charge.
"The Chinese, now trying to find reasons for the detention suggested that some members were linked to a terror group, to a banned organization, to watching propaganda videos in their hotel room," the group said in a Facebook post.
The Chinese government passed a law last month that widens the list of actions defined as terrorism, which could explain the overreaction of the police. That being said, if you don't want to run into any legal troubles in China, you might want to avoid watching historical documentaries. Better safe than sorry, right?
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