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UN condemnation of 5-year prison term imposed by China against Tibetan language activist

Tashi Wangchuk has been found guilty of “inciting separatism” after having criticized lack of Tibetan language education in schools

 
Tashi Wangchuk.
Tashi Wangchuk. Author: Freetibet.org
Six experts from the United Nations Human Rights Council have condemned a 5-year jail term that a Chinese court ruled on 22 May against Tashi Wangchuk, a businessman and activist who appeared in a 2015 documentary on The New York Times in which he demanded that linguistic rights of Tibetans be respected. Tashi denounced that it had been impossible for him to find a bilingual school in Tibetan and Chinese in Yushu, the city where he lived.

Following that, the Chinese police arrested him in January 2016. The Yushu court found him guilty of “inciting separatism”. The activist will be imprisoned until 2021.

The UN experts say China has violated and repressed Tashi’s “right to freely express his opinion about the human rights of the Tibetan minority of China,” and denounce that the Chinese government has even refused to handle them “information about specific measures undertaken to promote and protect the linguistic and cultural rights of the Tibetan minority.”