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 returned to China. 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. 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. The US has a “moral and legal responsibility” to grant Guan asylum, he added.