After reading a 2020 BuzzFeed News article about China’s establishment of large detention facilities for ethnic-minority Uyghurs, Guan Heng, a YouTuber residing in Henan, China, decided to investigate firsthand.
In October 2021, Guan undertook a solo journey to Xinjiang province, utilizing a telephoto lens to capture footage of the secretive camps that reportedly hold up to one million Uyghurs, according to human rights organizations.
This documentation led to a series of events that prompted Guan to flee China, travel to the U.S. via Ecuador and the Bahamas, and subsequently seek asylum, culminating in his detention during an Immigration Customs and Border (ICE) raid last summer.
After a five-year ordeal, a U.S. judge has now approved Guan’s asylum application.
“He … testified powerfully, persuasively to prove what has happened to him — why he left China, why he did those things,” stated Guan’s attorney, Chen Chuangchuang, in an interview with As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal.
‘He needed to do something’
Prior to these events, Guan, an enthusiastic traveler, spent time in Xinjiang in 2019, where he observed “some very peculiar things,” as described by his lawyer.
“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 explained.
Xinjiang is predominantly inhabited by China’s Uyghur population, a largely Muslim minority group who, according to human rights groups, face extensive surveillance, detention, and forced labor.
At that time, Guan lacked the necessary context to interpret what he had observed, his lawyer emphasized.
Subsequently, during the COVID-19 lockdown, he encountered the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative series Built To Last, by BuzzFeed News. This series, based on satellite imagery and interviews with former Uyghur detainees, exposed China’s expansion of mass internment facilities in Xinjiang.
“He thought he needed to do something,” Chen stated. “That’s how he made a decision: I want to go back to Xinjiang to take videos about the camps.”
The footage he captured appeared to validate BuzzFeed’s findings, revealing substantial facilities under construction in Xinjiang’s remote areas, towns, and military installations.
Fearing reprisal from Chinese authorities if he disclosed the footage, Guan flew to Ecuador, a country accessible to