Update: An emergency application has been filed with the court. Several witnesses and I have submitted materials to support the review.

The case is not over.

Full statement in English below

In response to inquiries from multiple German media outlets, I am issuing this statement regarding my interviewee Xu Xiaoren (known online as Macaron), who currently faces imminent deportation from Germany.

In March 2025, Xu was the only Chinese citizen I encountered on the Russian frontlines willing to appear on camera, showing his face, to condemn the war:

"Every inch of land is paid for in blood. It is inhuman and immoral."

For the year that followed, he endured relentless persecution and lived in flight because of this. Guided by professional ethics, I documented his journey through video, audio, and over 100,000 words of investigative notes, cross-verified by multiple witnesses, to record the risks the interviewee faced and to offer him a measure of protection.

In thirty years of investigative journalism, this is the first time I have had to do this. It shows how grave I believed the situation to be.

In February 2026, Xu escaped Russia. By April, I was informed that he had reached Germany, facing immediate deportation. He asked me to submit these original records to @BAMF_Dialog.

I never got the chance. No evidence was reviewed. No contact was made — with me or any other witness. Instead, BAMF ruled his application "manifestly unfounded," dismissing my statement as "mere rumors and unsubstantiated assertions."

An emergency application has been filed with the court. Several witnesses and I have submitted materials to support the review.

I am grateful for the attention of the press. A man who admitted he entered the war by mistake, who then defected from within it, and what he became over that year, may tell us something about how wars could truly end: the reflection, the suffering, the compassion, the change. It is a battle of the human soul. I ask the German people to hear his story, and to judge for themselves.

Full statement in English

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