Chinese man who exposed repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang granted US asylum

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - WASHINGTON — A Chinese national who exposed human rights abuses in Xinjiang has been granted asylum in the United States, after an immigration judge found he had a "well founded fear" of persecution if he was sent back to China.

Guan Heng, 38, applied for asylum after arriving in the US illegally in 2021. He has been in custody since being swept up in an immigration enforcement operation in August as part of a mass deportation campaign by the Trump administration.

The Department of Homeland Security initially sought to deport Guan to Uganda, but dropped the plan in December after his plight raised public concerns and attracted attention on Capitol Hill.

In 2020, Guan Heng secretly filmed detention facilitates in the north-western Chinese region, where human rights groups say more than one million ethnic Uyghurs have been detained against their will.

When asked during Wednesday's hearing in Napanoch, New York, if his plan in filming the detention facilities and releasing the video a few days before his arrival in the US was to give himself grounds for an asylum claim, Guan said it was not.

"I sympathized with the Uyghurs who were persecuted," he replied, via video link from the US correctional facility where he was being held.

Guan knew he had to leave China if he wanted to publish the footage, he told The Associated Press in a recent interview. He went first to Hong Kong and from there to Ecuador, where Chinese tourists could travel without a visa, and then to the Bahamas. He released most of his video footage on YouTube before taking a boat to Florida in October 2021.

Guan told the judge he didn’t know whether he would survive the boat trip and wanted to make sure the footage would be seen. After the video was released, police in China questioned his father three times, Guan said.

The videos show him travelling to parts of Xinjiang and filming what he describes as "concentration camps".

Several countries, including the US, UK, Canada and the Netherlands, have accused China of committing crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against the Uyghur Muslim population in Xinjiang.

A UN human rights committee in 2018 said it had credible reports that China was holding up to a million people in "counter-extremism centres" in the region, which is largely cut off to international media and observers.

China denies all allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang and describes the centres as "re-education camps" to prevent terrorism and root out Islamist extremism.

Meanwhile, Uyghurs in exile continue to recount stories of terrified or disappeared relatives.

A series of police files obtained by the BBC in 2022 revealed details of China's use of these camps and described the routine use of armed officers and the existence of a shoot-to-kill policy for those trying to escape.

People who have managed to escape the camps have reported physical, mental and sexual torture. Women have spoken of mass rape and sexual abuse.

Guan's lawyer, Chen Chuangchuang, said his client's case was a "textbook example of why asylum should exist".

The US has a "moral and legal responsibility" to grant Guan asylum, he added.

The judge on Wednesday said Guan was right to fear retaliation from the Chinese state if sent back, noting that his family had already been questioned, and said he had established his legal eligibility for asylum.

The Department of Homeland Security reserves the right to appeal and has 30 days to do so. — Agencies

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