Zhaxi Jie / 扎西杰 — Media Archive
This archive documents the case of Zhaxi Jie / 扎西杰. It preserves the documented record of a Tibetan from Zoige county, Sichuan, detained in December 2015 after filming and circulating footage of a protest, and sentenced in 2016.
Case chronology
- December 2015 — Zhaxi Jie films Zoige county resident Zhaxi Dunzhu (扎西顿珠) carrying out a solo protest on the streets of the county town — draped in a Buddhist prayer flag, holding aloft a large portrait of the Dalai Lama — and circulates the footage online.
- Around December 19, 2015 — Zhaxi Jie is detained by local police and placed under criminal detention; the charge is not publicly known.
- 2016 — Zhaxi Jie and Zhaxi Dunzhu are formally arrested by the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture authorities and sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment. The charges, sentence lengths, and serving prisons are not publicly documented.
- 2019 — The case is entered into the Prisoners of Conscience database with the filming, detention, and 2016 sentencing documented and the charge, sentence, and prison location recorded as unknown.
- 2026 — The name 扎西杰（藏） appears in the “sentence unknown” group of the 2026 political-prisoner roster.
Source records
- Prisoners of Conscience database — 扎西杰 / ZHA XI JIE (case record entered December 18, 2019). Documents: home county (Zoige county, Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan); the land-grievance background of his township; the December 2015 filming of Zhaxi Dunzhu’s protest and its online circulation; detention around December 19, 2015 and criminal detention; 2016 formal arrest and sentencing alongside Zhaxi Dunzhu by Aba prefecture authorities; charge, sentence, and prison recorded as unknown. Lists two further source references (Radio Free Asia; a Tibetan reporting site) which remain unverified.
Evidentiary notes
- No court document, verdict, or official procedural record for this case has been located.
- No state-media or official coverage of the detention or the 2016 sentencing has been found.
- The protest footage itself is referenced in the case record but no publicly accessible copy has been located.
- Zhaxi Jie’s present whereabouts and custody status are unknown; the 2016 sentence length is unknown, so no inference about release should be drawn.
- This person is distinct from other persons with similar names, including the Biru county protest leader Chi Jie (赤杰), who carried a different Chinese name and died in 2016.
Related person profile: Zhaxi Jie / 扎西杰