DHARAMSHALA, January 22: The International Tibet Network, a global coalition of around 190 Tibet groups, has urged the Chinese government to release Xu Zhiyong, a Chinese rights advocate and a former law lecturer who has been outspoken in support of the Tibetan people. The ITN also appealed the Chinese leadership to drop all “politically motivated” charges against Xu.
According to Xu’s lawyer Zhang Qingfang, Xu is to be tried today as part of “government-led crackdown on dissent, for assembling a crowd to disrupt order in a public place”. Xu and his five supporters will be facing trial this week, in a concerted crackdown on the “New Citizens’ Movement” that Xu launched in 2012.
Tibet campaigners also called on world governments to make urgent representations to China’s leaders on Xu’s behalf.
Welcoming the concern expressed by outgoing EU ambassador Markus Ederer for Xu on 17 January, International Tibet Network’s coordinator Tenzin Jigdal said, “Xu Zhiyong is a compassionate, courageous human rights defender, who has the respect and appreciation of Tibetans and supporters for his writings on Tibet.”
In an Opinion piece titled “Tibet Is Burning” in the New York Times in December 2012, Xu described his attempts to visit the family of a Tibetan self-immolation protestor named Nangdrol, in order to pay his respects. An excerpt from Xu’s article read, “I am sorry we Han Chinese have been silent as Nangdrol and his fellow Tibetans are dying for freedom. We are victims ourselves, living in estrangement, infighting, hatred and destruction.
Since 2009, 125 Tibetans have set themselves on fire to protest against China’s rule.
Jigdal said China’s new leadership under Xi Jinping is continuing to suppress dissent across the board, criminalizing the relatives of Tibetan self-immolation protesters, and detaining Uighur academic Ilham Tohti, who has criticized government policy in East Turkestan.
Xu Zhiyong is also a founder of the Beijing-based think tank, “Gongmeng” or Open Constitution Initiative, which conducted an independent investigation into the Uprisings on the Tibetan plateau in 2008. The resulting report, which was translated in full by International Campaign for Tibet, challenged the Chinese Government’s position that the exiled Tibetan leader Dalai Lama incited the protests, and presented evidence that the protests resulted from failures in Chinese policy. The report asked China’s leadership to earnestly listen to the voices of ordinary Tibetans while formulating policies for the Tibetans.
