When Guan Heng read a 2020 BuzzFeed News report about China constructing massive detention camps to imprison tens of thousands of ethnic-minority Uyghurs, he decided to go and see for himself.
Guan, a YouTuber who then lived in Henan, China, drove alone into the province of Xinjiang in October 2021 and used a telephoto lens to document the hidden camps, which human rights groups say hold as many as one million Uyghurs.
The footage he captured kicked off a wild series of events that saw him flee China, sail to the U.S. by way of Ecuador and the Bahamas, then claim asylum only to get swept up last summer in an Immigration Customs and Border (ICE) raid.
Now, five years after his saga began, a U.S. judge has granted Guan’s asylum claim.
“He … testified powerfully, persuasively to prove what has happened to him — why he left China, why he did those things,” Guan’s lawyer, Chen Chuangchuang, told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal.
Before all this unfolded, Guan, an avid traveller, had spent time in Xinjiang in 2019, where he noticed “some very weird things,” his lawyer said.
“He personally witnessed how the situation in Xinjiang is very different from the inner part of China, how many men and police or military forces were on the street,” Chen said.
Xinjiang is home to most of China’s Uyghur population, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority who, according to human rights groups, are subjected to widespread surveillance, detention and forced labour.
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