The International Campaign for Tibet on January 3 2018 reported that Tibetan shopkeeper Tashi Wangchuk, who has been in prison since January 2016 after  giving an interview to New York Times in 2015 that was critical of Chinese cultural and educational policies on Tibetans, is due to be tried. Tashi Wangchuk, who ran a shop in Yushu, had stressed the importance of Tibetans having access to education in the Tibetan language and his intention to file a lawsuit against the authorities for not enabling this According to a microblog posted by his attorney, Liang Xiaojun, the Yushu Intermediate Court in Qinghai Province has scheduled the trial for January 4 2018.