Pompeo alleges UW didn’t help student detained in China to preserve ‘multi-million dollar deal’.

https://mynorthwest.com/2358416/sec-of-state-pompeo-alleges-uw-didnt-help-detained-student/

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo levied criticism against the University of Washington on Wednesday, accusing the university of failing to render aid to one of its students, Vera Zhou, after she was detained by the Chinese government in 2017.

Zhou — who became a permanent U.S. resident in 2010 — was a junior at the UW when she was taken by Chinese authorities in October 2017 while visiting her father in Xinjiang. She was arrested for using an illegal VPN to log into an online portal for the UW to turn in her homework.

Shortly after being interrogated, Zhou was sent to a reeducation camp, where she was held in a cell with 11 other women, and forced to watch and study pro-Chinese government propaganda. Zhou’s mother called on the UW to step in and help bring her back to the United States, but was rebuffed, with the university claiming there was little it could do without the State Department’s aid, given that Zhou wasn’t a U.S. citizen.