Washington: A US immigration judge on Wednesday approved asylum in the US for a Chinese citizen who exposed human rights violations in his country. This Chinese citizen, who was detained during the crackdown against migrants, had said that if he was sent back to China, he could be tortured there. Guan Heng, 38, had applied for asylum after arriving in the US illegally in 2021.

Guan Heng was captured in August during President Donald Trump’s massive deportation campaign and has been in custody since then. The Home Ministry had earlier tried to send Guan to Uganda, but when the issue gained public attention in December, the department abandoned the plan. In 2020, Guan quietly made a video of Xinjiang’s detention centers. According to human rights activists, these videos of Guan provided evidence of large-scale human rights violations in China.

What video was released to get asylum?

It is alleged that about 10 lakh people of ethnic minorities, especially the Uyghur community, have been detained in these detention centres. During a hearing on Wednesday in Nappanch, New York, Guan was asked whether the purpose of recording the video and releasing the video before coming to the United States was to create grounds for asylum. On this he said that he had no such intention. “I had sympathy for the Uyghurs who were being oppressed,” Guan told the court through a translator at an online hearing from the Broome County Jail.

How to get out of China?

Guan recently told the Associated Press in an interview that if he wanted to make the footage public, he would have had to leave China. He first went to Hong Kong, then to Ecuador, where Chinese citizens can go without a visa, and then to the Bahamas. He uploaded most of his videos on YouTube and left for Florida by boat in October 2021. Guan told the judge that he did not know whether he would survive the boat trip or not, but he wanted the videos to be seen.

What did the court say?

After the video was released, the Chinese police interrogated his father three times. The Chinese government has denied allegations of human rights violations in Xinjiang. The government says that in these centers it trains local people for employment and eliminates fundamentalist thinking. Guan’s lawyer Chen Chuangchuang said there were “good reasons” for granting asylum and that the US had a “moral and legal responsibility” to grant asylum to Guan. After hearing all the arguments, Judge Charles Auslander, while delivering the verdict, said that the court has considered Guan as a credible witness and he has proved his legal eligibility for asylum.