Dharamshala — Chinese pro-democracy activist Zhang Yi, a leading figure in the 1989 pro-democracy movement, was arrested on July 1, 2026, allegedly for showing a photo of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to a Tibetan devotee at Sera Monastery in Lhasa.
17 days after Zhang Yi was detained, his brother received a phone call from the Chinese authorities informing him that Zhang Yi had been charged with “incitement” and instructing him to transfer living expenses to Zhang Yi.
Zhang Yi and his younger brother, Zhang Xuan, were visiting in Lhasa on July 1, 2026. At Sera Monastery, one of the three largest Tibetan Gelug sect (where Zhang Yi, due to the language barrier, had hoped to borrow a prayer rug), Zhang Yi showed a Tibetan man a photo of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on his phone; there was no further interaction.
Around 5:30 p.m., local time, on July 1, 2026, the two brothers were taken by monastery police to the Chengguan Police Station, in Lhasa, the Capital of Tibet, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Lhasa Public Security Bureau. Zhang Xuan was released after giving a statement. A State Security officer verbally informed Zhang Xuan that “Zhang Yi would be detained for 15 days,” but did not issue any official documentation.
On July 18, 2026, 17 days after Zhang Yi was detained, Zhang Xuan received a phone call from the Tibet State Security Bureau informing him that Zhang Yi had been charged with “incitement” and instructing him to transfer living expenses to Zhang Yi. They said a written notice would be mailed to Wuhan in a few days.
At the moment, it is unclear what specific charges have been made against Zhang Yi or where he is being held. Since July 1 coincides with the effective date of the People’s Republic of China’s “Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress,” Zhang Yi’s family fears that he may have unwittingly become a target of the crackdown carried out by the Chinese authorities.
According to Weiquanwang, Zhang Yi is resident of Wuhan, he was a student leader of the 1989 pro-democracy movement in Wuhan and a human rights defender. In 1989, he was a student in the Law Department at Wuhan University. Following the 1989 pro-democracy movement, Zhang Yi—as one of the student leaders in the Wuhan area—was charged by the authorities with “gathering a crowd to disrupt traffic order” and sentenced to two years in prison. While in prison, he was tortured, resulting in permanent hearing loss in one ear. After his release, Zhang Yi continued to hold dissenting political views. For more than 20 years, he has persistently commemorated the June 4th incident and advocated for citizens’ rights, leading the authorities to place him under close surveillance.
In June 2018, he was placed under administrative detention by the Chinese authorities for distributing photos of “Liu Xiaobo’s symbolic grave” and organising related commemorative activities. On December 30, 2018, Zhang Yi was violently intercepted and beaten at the entrance to the parking lot next to the “Luoyutou” restaurant on Lanjiang Road in Hanyang, Wuhan, by a State Security officer surnamed Min from Wuhan’s Dongxihu District and Officer Gao Feng of the Changqing Garden Police Station, after he refused to comply with the State Security officers’ illegal demands for “maintaining stability.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, he not only revealed the true state of the outbreak in Wuhan to the outside world, but also repeatedly negotiated with Wuhan’s State Security Bureau and the Political and Legal Affairs Commission, publicly demanding the release of citizen journalist Fang Bin.
