Arsenal might not be any good at parking the bus. But they sure know how to throw Mesut Özil under one. Imagine the frantic boardroom conversations on Friday after Özil expressed his horror at the imprisonment of millions of Uighurs in China. The fear of losing profits from shirt sales, commercial deals and future pre-season tours must have choked senior executives like Beijing residents in smog season.

Mesut Özil row: China's Arsenal fans burn shirts in anger at Xinjiang post Read more

In the club’s rush to post on the Chinese social media site Weibo that Özil’s comments were merely his “personal opinion” – before a simpering reminder that “Arsenal has always adhered to the principle of not involving itself in politics” – all that was missing was a white flag. Appeasement is never a good look, even if it is cloaked by apparent indifference.

Just his personal opinion? Hardly. Özil was entirely in tune with a United Nations panel and multiple human rights groups who have spoken out about the imprisonment of millions of Uighur people in internment camps without trial for “re-education” in what has been described as the largest incarceration of one ethnic group since the Holocaust, with multiple accounts of torture, rape and abuse from eyewitnesses who have passed through.

Arsenal’s reaction might have been proportionate if Özil was posting about the need for more NHS spending, or voicing his views on whether Brexit is a good idea. But when human rights groups are warning of systematic “brainwashing” – and when one Uighur man who badgered colleagues at work to pray more and not watch porn is tried for inciting ethnic hatred and jailed for 10 years – it just sounds callous.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Can you blame sportspeople for staying quiet when they see Mesut Özil bravely raising his head above the parapet only to be shot down by his own club? Photograph: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images

Only last week Anthony Joshua was widely criticised for not speaking out about human rights in Saudi Arabia. Yet can you blame sportspeople for staying quiet when they see Özil bravely raising his head above the parapet only to be shot down by his own club? As for Arsenal not involving themselves in politics, what did the club think they were doing when they agreed a £30m deal with the Rwandan government to promote tourism? Yes, the same Rwandan government that Human Rights Watch warns is guilty of “arbitrary detention, ill-treatment and torture” – and is one of 38 countries worldwide where human rights defenders face reprisals for cooperating with the UN.

Of course in trying to be apolitical, Arsenal were desperately trying to put a lid on the problem before the top blew off it. They would have seen the fate of the Houston Rockets, who plunged from being one of China’s most popular NBA teams to being blacklisted after its general manager Daryl Morey tweeted his support for protesters in Hong Kong, flashing before their eyes.

The Rockets are already a textbook study of what happens when you upset the Chinese government, who according to the NBA commissioner, Adam Silver, also made the extraordinary demand that Morey be sacked. The NBA has also suffered blowback, with CCTV-5, the country’s state-controlled broadcaster, replacing coverage of US games with highlights of the Chinese league.

The decision by CCTV not to show Arsenal’s match against Manchester City is another reminder that there is no middle ground here. No way to stick up for human rights and free speech without angering China. You are either for such values or against them.

Chinese state broadcaster pulls Arsenal v Man City after Mesut Özil criticism Read more

As Simon Chadwick, a professor of sports enterprise at Salford University who specialises in China, puts it: “The world is in the midst of an ideological battle: western liberalism versus eastern authoritarianism. And sport is one of the front lines.

“This case reveals a great deal about China’s growing power, how it seeks to exercise it, and what it deems to be acceptable and unacceptable. It also reveals how far the balance of power has tipped away from Europe and towards China.”

So what should Arsenal have done? Of course, the club were placed in an invidious position. But surely it was not beyond them to find a similar form of words to those used by Silver in the midst of the Morey firestorm. He pointedly told the Chinese government that American values travelled with the league wherever it went. “And one of those values is free expression,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Houston Rockets general manager, Daryl Morey, was thanked by Hong Kong protesters for his support but the Chinese government responded by trying to have him sacked. Photograph: Anthony Wallace/AFP via Getty Images

Failing that, the club should have said nothing – just as they did when another Arsenal player, Héctor Bellerín, voiced his support for Labour on the morning of the general election.

Meanwhile, this issue is clearly not going away. Last week it was Joshua who faced accusations that he was being duped by a Saudi regime paying him around £60m to “sportswash” the kingdom. This week it is Arsenal in the firing line. In the days ahead, Liverpool are bound to face questions in Doha when they play in the Fifa Club World Cup. Clearly clubs and organisations need to think harder about finding an elegant way to walk the tightrope if they decide to take the money of certain regimes.

But as the backlash over Özil’s Instagram message intensifies, some at the Emirates Stadium might just wonder about replicating that famous Mitchell and Webb sketch in which two Nazis ask themselves: “Are we the baddies?” On this issue there is only one answer.