to a very small number of extremely serious criminal offenders”. Statistics related to the death penalty continued to be classified as state secrets, making it impossible to verify the number of death sentences handed down and executions carried out. In December the Supreme People’s Court overturned the murder and rape conviction against Nie Shubin, who was executed in 1995. The Supreme People’s Court ordered the retrial and agreed with a lower court finding that there was a lack of clear evidence to prove that Nie Shubin was guilty. TIBET AUTONOMOUS REGION AND TIBETAN-POPULATED AREAS IN OTHER PROVINCES Ethnic Tibetans continued to face discrimination and restrictions on their rights to freedom of religion and belief, expression, association and peaceful assembly. In August, media reported that Lobsang Drakpa, a Tibetan monk who was detained by police in 2015 while staging a solo protest – an increasingly common form of protest in the Tibetan-populated areas – was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in a closed trial.3 At least three people set themselves on fire in Tibetan-populated areas during the year in protest against repressive policies by the authorities. The number of known selfimmolations since February 2009 rose to 146. A Tibetan blogger known as Druklo was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in February for “inciting separatism” for his online posts on religious freedom, the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan issues and his possession of the banned book Sky Burial.4 Tashi Wangchuk was detained in January and charged with “inciting separatism” for advocating Tibetan language education and giving an interview to the New York Times. He remained in detention at the end of the year.5 Housing rights – forced evictions In July, the government began demolishing a large part of Larung Gar, reportedly the largest Tibetan Buddhist institute in the world, located in Seda (Serta) County, in the 122 Ganzi (Kardze) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province. Local Chinese authorities ordered the population of Larung Gar to be reduced by more than half to 5,000 in order to carry out “correction and rectification”. Thousands of monks, nuns and lay people were at risk of forced evictions. XINJIANG UIGHUR AUTONOMOUS REGION In March the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region’s (XUAR) Party Secretary, Zhang Chunxian, announced that progress had been made in maintaining social stability in the region, and that cases of “violent terrorism” had decreased. Nonetheless, the government said that it would continue to maintain indefinitely its “strike hard” stance against “violent terrorism”. The government continued to detain ethnic Uighur writers and Uighur language website editors. Human rights defender Zhang Haitao, an ethnic Han, was sentenced to 19 years’ imprisonment on charges of “inciting subversion” and “providing intelligence overseas”. His lawyers believed that the severity of his sentence was in part due to his commentary on ethnic issues. The government continued to violate the right to freedom of religion, and crack down on all unauthorized religious gatherings. Abudulrekep Tumniyaz, deputy director of the Xinjiang Islamic Association, said in March that all underground preaching sites in the XUAR had been shut down. In October, media reported that several localities within the XUAR had announced that they will require all residents to hand in their passports to the police. Thereafter, all XUAR residents would be required to present biometric data – such as DNA samples and body scan images – before being permitted to travel abroad. The measure came amid a security crackdown and greater travel restrictions targeting ethnic minorities in the XUAR. Cultural rights In August, the provincial government announced a large-scale plan to send 1,900 Amnesty International Report 2016/17