Asserting that two Tibetans convicted of a series of bombings might have been framed, human rights activists are appealing for foreign pressure on China to rescind a death sentence imposed on one of them.
Activists said the Tibetans -- one a senior Buddhist monk -- were denied a fair trial and suggested they might have been targeted as revenge for their peaceful activism.
"It's unconscionable to impose a death sentence under such conditions," said a statement by Liu Qing, president of New York-based Human Rights in China.
In addition to Liu's group, Amnesty International, the International Campaign for Tibet and the government-in-exile of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, are calling for pressure on Beijing to revoke the sentence.
China angrily rejects foreign government appeals in court cases as interference in its affairs, and dismisses human rights groups claims as biased. But Beijing sometimes responds to pressure even while publicly denying that it is doing so.
Activists accuse Beijing of misusing the international antiterror campaign as an excuse to crush peaceful pro-independence sentiment in Tibet and the northwestern Muslim region of Xinjiang.
The monk, Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche, received a suspended death sentence Monday from a court in western China's Sichuan province. His aide, Lobsang Dhondup, was sentenced to death.
Death sentences in China are automatically appealed but rarely overturned. Suspended death sentences usually are commuted later to long prison terms.
"We appeal to the international community to put pressure on the Chinese government to rescind the death sentence," the Dalai Lama's government said in a statement from its base in Dharamsala, India.
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