Tibetan activist
Tibetan exiles and supporters staging protest . (File photo)

A Tibetan education activist was on Tuesday sentenced to five years in prison by a Chinese court for inciting separatism, Amnesty International (AI) said, calling the sentence โ€œunjustโ€ and urging his immediate release.

The main evidence against Tashi Wangchuk, who was sentenced by a court in Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai province, was a 2015 video by the New York Times about his campaign for saving the Tibetan language, according to his lawyer.

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โ€œTodayโ€™s verdict against Tashi Wangchuk is a gross injustice. He is being cruelly punished for peacefully drawing attention to the systematic erosion of Tibetan culture,โ€ AI East Asia Research Director Joshua Rosenzweig was cited as saying by Efe news.

Before his arrest, the 31-year-old activist had expressed concern over the fact that many Tibetan children could not fluently speak their native language, contributing to the progressive extinction of the Tibetan culture.

โ€œTashi must be immediately and unconditionally released,โ€ demanded AI, pointing out that the activist had already spent two years in detention without access to his family.

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Rosenzweig claimed that Tashi Wangchuk โ€œwas a human rights defender and prisoner of conscience who used the media and Chinaโ€™s own legal system in his struggle to preserve Tibetan language, culture and identityโ€.

In the New York Times video, the activist had highlighted โ€œthe extreme discrimination and restrictions on freedom of expression that Tibetans face in China todayโ€.

Non-profit Human Rights Watch (HRW) also criticized the prison term for Tashi Wangchuk, whose โ€œonly crime was to peacefully call for the right of minority peoples to use their own languageโ€, a right safeguarded by the Chinese Constitution.

โ€œHis conviction on bogus separatism charges show that critics of government policy on minorities have no legal protections,โ€ said HRW China Director Sophie Richardson.

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