Staring into the cellphone camera with the ease of the successful fashion model he once was, Mr. Ghappar’s face flashes with a grimace of discomfort as he adjusts the camera to show his left hand. It is handcuffed to a bed. He pans to show a floor covered in dirt and a badly stained wall, before turning the camera to the windows, which are covered in bars. Outside, red banners proclaim “the uprightness and purity of Party conduct” and call on people to “love China and strive to be in the vanguard.”
Little more than a month later, police came to Mr. Ghappar’s home in Foshan, a southern manufacturing city near Guangzhou, and took him away. Officers told a friend of his that he had been sent for “education” in Xinjiang, nearly 3,500 kilometres away. It’s not clear where Mr. Ghappar is today. His family has lost contact with him. Months later, they have received no information on his whereabouts.
