As the UN experts point out in their statement published on 16 April, the new ‘Ethnic Unity’ law states that organisations and individuals even outside mainland China can be pursued for “legal responsibility in accordance with law.” This means that a Tibetan in Zurich or London who attends a birthday celebration for the Dalai Lama, or advocates for Tibet with their local MP, could now be defined by Beijing as a criminal for promoting Tibetan culture. Tibetans who manage to return to see family in Tibet are now at heightened risk.

Already, two Chinese international students who expressed solidarity with Tibetans while they were in Europe and Australia have been imprisoned when they returned to the PRC. Zhang Yadi, a Chinese international student who had been due to begin studies at the University of London last September, was arrested when she returned home to see her family in China last July. She now faces a possible long prison sentence, apparently for her support of Tibetan culture through Buddhism. In an equally disturbing new development, in Australia, a Chinese student studying in Sydney was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment for joining solidarity protests for Uyghurs and Tibetans and pro-democracy protests.