Twenty-four-year-old college student Vera Yueming Zhou came to the United States in 2008 and is a U.S. permanent resident. She also happens to be a member of the Hui, a largely Muslim ethnic group. In October 2017, she used a virtual private network application to file her University of Washington homework while visiting her father in the city of Kuytun, China. That infraction was enough to get her arrested and sent to a “reeducation camp,” where she spent five months in a small, crowded cell with 11 other Muslim women. She never had a hearing or trial.
Despite having recently undergone cancer surgery, she was denied necessary medical treatment in the camp. She was allowed only one highly supervised visit with her father during her imprisonment, for 15 minutes. The prisoners were forced to sing patriotic songs, forbidden to speak their native language or practice their religions, kept under constant surveillance and encouraged to report on each other to their jailers.
After being released from the camp for unknown reasons, Zhou remained trapped in China because authorities kept her passport and green card. She was placed under extreme surveillance in Kuytun, where she lingered in limbo for 18 more months.