Chinese authorities have extended the prison sentence of a Tibetan environmental activist from Sichuan province by an additional eight months after he rejected charges of “disrupting social order,” two sources from inside Tibet told Radio Free Asia. In a video clip posted in October on the Chinese social media platform WeChat, Tsongon Tsering, 29, spoke out against the illegal extraction of sand and gravel mining activity along the Tsaruma River in his village in Ngaba (in Chinese, Aba) prefecture.
“The large-scale and indiscriminate extraction of sand from the river has led to serious soil erosion in the surrounding area and is posing a threat to the foundations of residents’ homes,” he said in the video, in which he holds up his government ID card.After posting that, Tsering was arrested. He was initially sentenced to eight months by the Kyungchu County People’s Court on Oct. 27 on charges of “disturbing social order” and “provoking trouble and picking quarrels” after he made the rare public appeal online to authorities.
