Wuhan citizen Zhang Yi criminally detained by the Lhasa Municipal Public Security Bureau on July 18, 2026, on suspicion of “inciting secession” and held at the Lhasa City Detention Center

(Rights Defense Network Information Center report) On July 22, 2026, this website learned: The family of Wuhan citizen Zhang Yi had received notification that Zhang Yi was criminally detained by the Lhasa Municipal Public Security Bureau on July 18, 2026, on suspicion of “inciting secession,” and is currently being held at the Lhasa City Detention Center.

Zhang Yi’s profile: Born in 1968, a native of Wuhan, Hubei Province; a Wuhan student leader during the “1989 pro-democracy student movement,” a democratic dissident, a former volunteer with the Wuhan Mutual Aid Association (group), a rights-defending citizen, a human rights defender, and a Chinese political prisoner in custody.

In 1989, he was a student in the Law Department of Wuhan University. Because he participated in the “1989 pro-democracy student movement” and was one of the student leaders in the Wuhan area, he was subsequently arrested by the authorities and sentenced to two years in prison for “the crime of gathering a crowd to disrupt traffic order,” and was sent to Hongshan Prison to serve his sentence; he suffered brutal torture in prison, resulting in permanent hearing loss in one ear; after his release, because he continued to uphold dissenting views and for many years continued to commemorate “June 4” and engage in citizens’ rights defense, he was listed by the Wuhan authorities as a key target for stability-maintenance surveillance;

In June 2018, he was placed under administrative detention by Wuhan police for posting online photographs of “Liu Xiaobo’s cenotaph” and organizing related commemorative activities; on December 30 of the same year, because he refused to cooperate with the “stability-maintenance demands” put forward by the domestic security police, he was jointly intercepted and beaten by police from Wuhan’s Dongxihu District and officers from Changqing Garden Police Station at the entrance to the parking lot beside the “Luo Yutou” restaurant on Lanjiang Road in Wuhan’s Hanyang District;

During the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, because he was a volunteer with the Wuhan Mutual Aid Association (group), and in accordance with the group’s principle of providing assistance to the families of Wuhan’s victims, he courageously gave multiple interviews to foreign media and actively called for the rescue of Fang Bin (Fang Bin (CPPC number: 00868), who was secretly sentenced to three years for filming a video showing the number of deaths in hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan), and voiced support for the rights-defending family members who had been arrested, including Zhang Hai. As a result, he was warned, admonished, and threatened by the police more than ten times, to the extent that the Wuhan authorities once sought to collect his information and frame him for “financial fraud” in order to silence him; during this period, his son Zhang Hongyuan also faced the risk of arrest for helping his father give interviews to foreign media and film videos of public protests against the lockdown, forcing his son to leave China alone in April 2023 and travel to the Netherlands to seek political asylum;

In June 2026, he planned to travel to Tibet and Xinjiang, but the Exit-Entry Administration refused to issue him a border pass. After repeated negotiations, he was ultimately permitted to travel; on July 1, 2026, while he and his younger brother Zhang Xuan were traveling in Lhasa, both were suddenly taken away by police from Lhasa’s Chengguan District; his younger brother was released after giving a statement at the police station, but he was placed under administrative detention for 15 days. The reason for the alleged offense was that, while visiting Sera Monastery, he wanted to borrow a prostration mat from a Tibetan, but because they could not communicate due to the language barrier, he showed the other person a photograph of the Dalai Lama on his mobile phone. Unexpectedly, the police learned of this and quickly took him away; on July 18, after he had been detained for 17 days, his younger brother received a telephone call from Lhasa police saying that he had been criminally detained on suspicion of “incitement” and asking the family to transfer living expenses for him, while also saying that the detention notice would be mailed to his hometown of Wuhan several days later; the family subsequently received the detention notice, which showed that Zhang Yi had been criminally detained by the Lhasa Municipal Public Security Bureau on July 18, 2026, on the grounds of “suspected inciting secession,” and was being held at the Lhasa City Detention Center.