This past Saturday, Tibetan environmentalist Rinchen Samdrup was convicted of "splittism" after leading a campaign against a local policeman involved in poaching. Samdrup was sentenced to five years in prison, and he has been given ten days to appeal the conviction.

Before his arrest, Samdrup was the head of an environmental NGO that operated in the Tibet Autonomous Region near the Sichuan border. The organization worked to fight pollution, poaching, and deforestation with the help of nearby villages, and domestic organizations within China as well as larger international conservation groups lauded Samdrup's work.  Samdrup himself was arrested in August 2009, however.  According to his daughter, Samdrup was subjected to frequent sleep deprivation among other methods of torture while in detention.  And his lawyer, Xia Jun, stated that he had not been allowed to meet with Samdrup since January.

Persecution by the Chinese government, however, is nothing new for Samdrup.  Last year Samdrup's younger brother, Jigme Namgyal, was sent to the Laogai for 21 months on charges of "harming national security", allegedly possessing articles related (and favorable) to the Dalai Lama.  And less than two weeks ago, Samdrup's older brother Karma Samdrup, a prominent Tibetan businessman, was found guilty of robbing ancient tombs located in Xinjiang.  Despite the fact that CCTV named him "philanthropist of the year" in 2006, Karma Samdrup will nevertheless spend 15 years in prison. Pu Zhiqiang, Karma Samdrup's lawyer, stated publicly that the charges were spurious, and Rinchen Samdrup's vocal defense of his brother was likely what triggered these most recent charges against Rinchen.

These three brothers are among many prominent Tibetan intellectuals who have been imprisoned or otherwise silenced within the last year.  Human Rights Watch called the charges against the Samdrup brothers "trumped-up" and argued that these allegations were part of a broad effort on the part of the Chinese government to stifle increasing political unrest in Tibet.