Wuhan citizen Zhang Yi arrested on July 28, 2026, on suspicion of “inciting secession” and currently detained at the Lhasa City Detention Center

(Rights Defense Network Information Center report) On August 5, 2026, this outlet learned that Wuhan citizen Zhang Yi was criminally detained by the Lhasa Municipal Public Security Bureau on July 18, 2026, on suspicion of “inciting secession,” and was formally arrested on the same charge on July 28. He is currently detained at the Lhasa City Detention Center.

Zhang Yi’s biography: Born in 1965, he is a native of Wuhan, Hubei Province. He previously studied at the School of Law of Wuhan University’s School of Adult Education. In 1989, he was an electrician with the Wuhan Water Supply Company. He is a pro-democracy dissident, former volunteer with the Wuhan Mutual Aid and Mutual Assistance Association (group), rights-defending citizen, human rights defender, and political prisoner currently detained in China.

Because Zhang Yi participated in the “1989 pro-democracy movement,” he was arrested by the authorities afterward and sentenced to two years for “the crime of gathering a crowd to disrupt traffic order,” and was sent to Hongshan Prison to serve his sentence; he suffered severe 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 defend citizens’ rights, the Wuhan authorities classified him as a key person for stability-maintenance surveillance;

In June 2018, he was administratively detained by Wuhan police for distributing photos of Liu Xiaobo’s “cenotaph” online and planning related commemorative activities; on December 30 of the same year, because he refused to cooperate with the “stability-maintenance requirements” put forward by public security national security officers, he was violently intercepted and beaten by officers from the Dongxihu District police and the Changqing Garden police station, who jointly stopped him 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 epidemic in 2020, because he was a volunteer with the Wuhan Mutual Aid and Mutual Assistance Association (group), and in accordance with the group’s principle of providing assistance to the families of Wuhan victims, he bravely gave multiple interviews to overseas media, 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 epidemic in Wuhan), and expressed support for the arrested rights-defending family members Zhang Hai and others. As a result, he was warned, reprimanded, and threatened by police more than ten times. The Wuhan authorities even attempted to collect information on him 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 overseas media and film videos of public protests against the lifting of lockdowns, 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 Zhang Yi was administratively detained for 15 days. The alleged reason for the offense was that, while visiting Sera Monastery, he wanted to borrow a prostration mat from a Tibetan person, but because they could not communicate due to the language barrier, he showed the person a photograph of the Dalai Lama on his 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 call from Lhasa police saying that Zhang Yi had been criminally detained on suspicion of “incitement,” asking the family to transfer living expenses to him, and stating that the detention notice would be mailed to the family home in Wuhan a few days later; the family subsequently received the detention notice, which stated that Zhang Yi had been criminally detained by the Lhasa Municipal Public Security Bureau on July 18, 2026, on the grounds of “suspected incitement to secede from the country”
and was being detained at the Lhasa City Detention Center.

This outlet will continue to follow Zhang Yi’s situation.