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.