[The advocate, Tashi Wangchuk, 31, has been
detained by the police in the town of Yushu, which is mostly Tibetan, since
January. He was formally arrested in March on the charge of inciting
separatism, which can result in a 15-year prison sentence. Mr. Tashi has no
known record of advocating Tibetan independence or separatism.]
By Edward Wong
 |
|
Tashi Wangchuk, a Tibetan entrepreneur
and education advocate, could face up
to 15 years in prison if
convicted of inciting separatism.
Credit Gilles Sabrie for The
New York Times
|
BEIJING
— Police officers in western
China have investigated a Tibetan language education advocate for interviews he
did last year with The New York Times and are pushing for a court trial on a
charge of inciting separatism based on his contact with Times journalists,
according to his lawyer.
The advocate, Tashi Wangchuk, 31, has been
detained by the police in the town of Yushu, which is mostly Tibetan, since
January. He was formally arrested in March on the charge of inciting
separatism, which can result in a 15-year prison sentence. Mr. Tashi has no
known record of advocating Tibetan independence or separatism.
Mr. Tashi’s case entered a new phase on
Thursday, when the police concluded an additional investigation at the
prosecutors’ request and handed over those results. Prosecutors now have about
90 days to decide whether the case should go to court, said Liang Xiaojun, Mr.
Tashi’s lawyer.
If the case goes to court, Mr. Tashi, who was
interviewed at length by The Times on Tibetan culture last year, will almost
certainly be convicted. The conviction rate in China is more than 90 percent.
Inciting separatism is a serious political charge that is used to silence
people from ethnic minority groups who are deemed troublemakers by officials.
Mr. Tashi’s case is known among international
human rights groups that focus on Chinese government abuses and among Tibet
advocacy groups. In April, Amnesty International urged people to call on the
Chinese government to “immediately and unconditionally” release Mr. Tashi.
International Campaign for Tibet, based in Washington, has asked the United
States government to raise the cases of Mr. Tashi and Shokjang, an imprisoned
Tibetan writer.
Officials from the United States, Britain and
other Western nations have received information on Mr. Tashi’s detention.
President Obama and other Western leaders are traveling to China this weekend
for the Group of 20 summit meeting, and they may raise human rights issues with
Chinese leaders.
Mr. Tashi was detained on Jan. 27 by police
officers in Yushu, the town on the Tibetan plateau of Qinghai Province where
Mr. Tashi lives with his parents.
Mr. Tashi, a shopkeeper, wrote blog posts
about the disintegration of the Tibetan language among younger Tibetans and
urged governments in the region to adopt true bilingual education, using
Tibetan and Chinese equally as teaching languages in schools.
In September 2015, he traveled to Beijing to
try to file a lawsuit against Yushu officials for not properly supporting the
Tibetan language, but failed to do so. He was quoted later that year in two
Times articles on Tibetan language and culture written from Yushu, and he was
the centerpiece of a nine-minute Times documentary video. He had come into
contact with Times journalists in May while on an exploratory visit to Beijing
and insisted on doing on-the-record interviews.
Mr. Liang, the lawyer, said the police case
files, which he had seen on a June visit to Yushu, showed that the police had
focused their investigation on Mr. Tashi’s interviews with The Times, which
were conducted by this reporter and Jonah M. Kessel, a video journalist. He
said the police were especially incensed by the video, produced by Mr. Kessel.
(One section of the police case files mistakenly names additional people as
producers.)
Mr. Liang, who was retained by Mr. Tashi’s
family, met separately with Mr. Tashi and the Yushu police chief.
“I met with Tashi in the detention center for
more than one hour,” he said. “Tashi was doing well. He thinks that what he did
wasn’t wrong. Tashi said he had had no intention of inciting separatism.”
In his interviews with The Times, Mr. Tashi
never advocated Tibetan independence. He said Tibet should remain under Chinese
governance and called instead for greater regional autonomy, especially in
language use and education. Mr. Tashi also praised Xi Jinping, the Chinese
president and Communist Party chief.
“All he wants is to try to preserve Tibetan
culture,” Mr. Liang said.
He added that it was possible that
prosecutors could ask the police for further investigation into Mr. Tashi and
delay the decision on whether to bring the case to court.
Mr. Tashi’s family said in early March that
the police were illegally holding Mr. Tashi since officers had not notified
family members of Mr. Tashi’s detention. Chinese law requires the police to
notify family members of a detainee within 24 hours of a detention, with only a
few exceptions.
In late March, the police finally told family
members of Mr. Tashi’s arrest and of the separatism charge.
Mr. Tashi sold goods from the Tibetan plateau
in a shop in Yushu and online via the popular Taobao platform, started by
Alibaba, the online commerce giant. In 2014, Alibaba featured Mr. Tashi in a
video produced for its international roadshow before a prominent initial public
offering.
Last year, Mr. Tashi also contacted employees
at Alibaba in hopes of getting Jack Ma, the billionaire co-founder of Alibaba,
to support his efforts at compelling local officials to expand Tibetan-language
education.
Follow Edward Wong on Twitter @comradewong.