Wuhan Citizen Zhang Yi Criminally Detained While Traveling in Lhasa, Tibet

(Rights Protection Network Information Center report) On July 18, 2026, this outlet learned that Wuhan citizen Zhang Yi was recently criminally detained while traveling in Lhasa, Tibet.

Zhang Yi and his younger brother Zhang Xuan traveled in Lhasa on July 1, 2026. At Sera Monastery, Zhang Yi showed a Tibetan person a photo of the Dalai Lama on his phone (because, unable to communicate due to the language barrier, he wanted to borrow a prayer mat); there was no other interaction. At around 17:30, the brothers were taken by police from inside the monastery to the Chengguan Branch of the Lhasa Public Security Bureau. Zhang Xuan was released after giving a statement. National security police verbally told Zhang Xuan that “Zhang Yi [would get] 15 days,” but did not issue any legal documents. On July 18, 17 days after Zhang Yi was detained, Zhang Xuan received a phone notification that Tibet’s national security police said Zhang Yi was involved in “incitement,” asked him to transfer living expenses to Zhang Yi, and said a written notice would be mailed to Wuhan in a few days.

Zhang Yi’s alleged offense is currently unknown, as is his place of detention. Because July 1 coincided with the beginning of the implementation of the Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, Zhang Yi’s family fears that he may have inadvertently become a target of the authorities’ crackdown.

Zhang Yi’s biography: A Wuhan resident, a student leader in Wuhan during the 1989 student movement, and a human rights defender. In 1989, he was a student in the Law Department of Wuhan University. After the “1989 student movement,” Zhang Yi, as one of the student leaders in the Wuhan area, was convicted by the authorities of “the crime of gathering a crowd to disrupt traffic order” and sentenced to two years in prison. He was tortured in prison, resulting in permanent hearing loss in one ear. After his release, Zhang Yi continued to maintain his dissenting views. For more than 20 years, he has also continued to commemorate “June 4” and engage in citizens’ rights defense, and Zhang Yi was consequently placed by the authorities on their list of priority surveillance targets.

In June 2018, he was administratively detained by the authorities for distributing photos of “Liu Xiaobo’s cenotaph” and planning related commemorative activities. On December 30, 2018, Zhang Yi refused to cooperate with the illegal stability-maintenance demands put forward by national security police. At the entrance to the parking lot beside the “Luo Yutou” restaurant on Lanjiang Road in Hanyang, Wuhan, he was violently intercepted and beaten by national security officer Miao of Wuhan’s Dongxihu District and police officer Gao Feng of the Changqing Huayuan police station.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he not only disclosed the true situation of the pandemic to the outside world but also repeatedly negotiated with Wuhan’s national security police and the political and legal affairs system, publicly demanding the release of citizen journalist Fang Bin.