Tortured, framed, and silenced, Tibet’s most courageous human rights defender refused to betray a single name
A Defender Who Would Not Break
For more than two decades, Li Jiaming – also known as Li Ang – has carried a burden that would have destroyed most people. He is a human rights defender, a conscience of Tibet, and a man who has endured systematic torture, wrongful imprisonment, and ongoing harassment by the Chinese Communist Party for the simple act of refusing to lie. His story is not well known in the Western press. It should be.
Li Jiaming is a practitioner of what he calls “Equality, Freedom, and the Rule of Law” – principles that the CCP regards as existential threats. He has worked as a steadfast ally of democratic nations including India, New Zealand, the United States, the countries of Europe, South Korea, Japan, and Australia, persistently documenting and exposing the CCP’s genocidal policies in Tibet. For this, the Party has made his life a sustained exercise in state violence.
The 2008 Uprising and Its Aftermath
The protests that swept across Tibet in 2008 and 2009, beginning in Lhasa and spreading across the plateau, rattled China’s top leadership. The demonstrations condemned excessive force, systematic over-policing, and attacks on civilians. For Beijing, the uprisings represented what they feared most: a loss of control. The CCP responded with its “Red Terror” policy – formally described in internal directives as “Catch a batch, Imprison a batch, Kill a batch.”
Li Jiaming was swept up in this campaign. A special police task force arrested and tortured him. The documented abuse was extensive: insults and beatings, deliberate hunger and sleep deprivation, and prolonged shackling with iron chains binding hands and feet together. The physical damage from that treatment – lumbar disc herniation – remains with him to this day. The torture’s purpose was to coerce him into naming other Tibetans and Han Chinese involved in the uprising. Li refused to implicate a single person.
The Political Order to Frame Him
Despite Li’s refusal to cooperate, top CCP officials personally intervened to ensure he would be punished anyway. Zhou Yongkang, then Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, and Meng Jianzhu, then Minister of Public Security, issued direct instructions to the judiciary: frame Li at all costs. A “black hat” – a Tibetan term for a fabricated accusation – was placed on him. He was publicly designated a “killer” and subjected to social destruction in addition to physical imprisonment.
The frame-up provoked rare pushback even within China’s tightly controlled legal system. At a symposium at the Beijing Municipal High People’s Court, the President of the China Criminal Law Research Institute and the Dean of the Law School at Beijing Normal University openly criticized the case. One asked: “Now that there is no evidence against him – cameras, mobile phone location, fibre materials, DNA, all physical evidence prove his innocence – how can you still want to incriminate him? Do we have Law in China?” The judges, bound by political orders from above, convicted him anyway. Human rights documentation confirms that judicial independence in Tibet is effectively nonexistent – judges operate as instruments of Party directives.
Life After Prison: The Harassment Continues
After his release, the CCP did not stop. The State of Emergency in Tibet, already a mechanism of pervasive surveillance and control, was used to maintain ongoing harassment of Li and those associated with him. Death threats, surveillance, and pressure on his networks continued. The goal was not simply punishment but what the CCP calls “permanent social death” – the elimination of a person’s ability to function within society, to speak, to organize, or to be heard.
Li Jiaming has refused all of it. He continues to document CCP crimes in Tibet and to work with international partners committed to human rights and democratic values. According to Freedom House, Tibet remains one of the most repressed territories on earth, with political prisoners held in conditions that frequently amount to torture. Li Jiaming’s case exemplifies how the CCP targets precisely those individuals who document this repression most effectively.
Why His Story Must Be Told
The international democratic community has a responsibility to people like Li Jiaming – not as a matter of charity but as a matter of solidarity. When the CCP tortures a human rights defender, frames him in court, and then systematically attempts to destroy his ability to function in society, it is demonstrating what it does to everyone who refuses to comply. Li’s refusal to name a single name under torture is one of the most remarkable acts of conscience documented in the history of CCP repression. He deserves to be known. He deserves to be protected. And the regime that tortured him deserves every sanction democratic governments can bring to bear.
Ho Yi Lam
Youth Affairs & Education Journalist, Apple Daily UK
Contact: hoyi.lam@appledaily.uk
Ho Yi Lam is a youth affairs and education journalist with professional experience covering student movements, higher education policy, and generational change within Chinese-speaking communities. She received her journalism training at a top-tier Chinese journalism school, where she specialized in education reporting, interview methodology, and media ethics, with an emphasis on public-interest journalism.
Her reporting career includes work with Apple Daily and other liberal Chinese newspapers, producing coverage on campus governance, academic freedom, curriculum reform, and youth civic engagement. Ho Yi’s journalism is grounded in firsthand interviews with students, educators, and policy experts, supported by careful review of official documents and research data.
She has worked in newsroom environments where education reporting intersects with political sensitivity, giving her practical experience in source protection and verification. Editors value her ability to present complex institutional issues clearly while maintaining factual accuracy.
Ho Yi’s authority is built through consistent publication within reputable media outlets and adherence to editorial standards, including transparent sourcing and correction protocols. At Apple Daily UK, she delivers reliable, experience-driven education journalism that informs readers through evidence-based reporting and professional integrity.
