Twenty tourists, from Britain, South Africa and India, were detained last Friday after visiting the inner Mongolian city of Ordos. Eleven were released and deported earlier in the week. And now the remainder are to follow. From Ordos, in Inner Mongolia, BBC China Editor Carrie Gracie reports.
The last of 20 foreign tourists arrested in Ordos, Inner Mongolia are to be deported from China.
I'm calling this the Ordos ordeal.
The group, which included nine Britons, were detained on 10 July during a tour of ancient China and accused of watching banned terrorist videos.
Twenty foreign tourists were detained here over a week ago. The last of them are being deported today.
The tourists said that the incident was a misunderstanding, and that they were watching a documentary about Genghis Khan.
We've spent two days on our own Ordos ordeal, trying to find out exactly what went wrong for the tourists. The questions still far outnumber the answers.
The BBC's Carrie Gracie reports from Ordos.
The Genghis Khan mausoleum is a bit off the beaten track for foreign tourists in China. There is not much to see and it's not even clear if the Mongol invader is even buried here.
The tour group itinerary said they spent four whole days here. So how did they end up here in the local detention centre?
'Terrorist videos'
How could a group of prosperous tourists including doctors, businesspeople and elderly couples be mistaken for terrorists?
I found the Ordos police authorities as tight-lipped as the government, but state media said the group had been watching banned terrorist videos.
The tourists said it was a horrible misunderstanding - that they had been watching a documentary about Genghis Khan.
Many of the tourists were Muslims. While China is suspicious of all religious groups, Islam is under particular scrutiny.
Here in Ordos, there's feasting to mark the end of Ramadan but not much to celebrate for the foreign tourists being deported, or for a Chinese government embarrassed internationally by this case of heavy-handed local policing.
