In a video released late last month, the TIP, a predominately Uighur jihadist organization, framed the coronavirus outbreak in China as “punishment from God” for the state’s oppression of the Uighur minority.

“They [the Chinese government] destroyed the mosques and changed them to places of dancing, vices and insolence, they tramped upon the Qur’an and burned them, and transgressed upon the honor and raped the women,” the TIP spokesman states.

As a result, the speaker alleges, “the revenge from God came against these criminals and he sent upon them the deadly coronavirus.” The jihadist spokesman also adds that “the entire world knows that what happened in China is merely part of the punishment from God.”