A prominent Tibetan environmental activist sentenced to five years in prison on what critics say were trumped-up charges of inciting separatism has been released, according to a report this week on a Web site run by Tibetan exiles.
The environmentalist, Rinchen Samdrup, who led Tibetans in planting trees and fighting the poaching of animals, was sentenced in 2010 for transgressions including posting an article supporting the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, on his Web site. The image of the Dalai Lama is banned by the Chinese government and Chinese Communist Party.
The case against Rinchen was seen by critics as a result of a political feud — Rinchen had accused a police officer of poaching in Tibet — and as illustrative of how easily members of China’s ethnic minorities, especially Tibetans and Uighurs, could be wrongly accused of separatism by their enemies.
Rinchen, who had been in custody since August 2009, was released on Friday last week from a prison in Tibet, according to a report posted Monday on Phayul, a news and advocacy Web site.
The time he served amounted to his full five-year sentence because Chinese authorities often define the start of the term as the time a suspect is first detained, not necessarily the time of sentencing, said Kate Saunders, a spokeswoman for the International Campaign for Tibet, an advocacy group.
Two of Rinchen’s brothers have also gone to prison.
His older brother, Karma Samdrup, a wealthy businessman and environmental advocate who collected Tibetan antiquities, is serving 15 years in Xinjiang, north of Tibet, on charges of robbing tombs. A younger brother, Jigme Namgyal, was freed after serving almost two years for “harming national security.”
Rinchen and Karma were unlikely prisoners. They had received awards for their environmentalism and philanthropy from official Chinese organizations and foreign groups, including the Ford Motor Co.
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