NGAWANG CHOEPHEL

April 29, 1998

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Secretary Albright is planning to travel to China soon to discuss a wide range of important issues with Chinese officials. Her trip is in anticipation of a subsequent visit by President Clinton. On her agenda will be the issue of human rights, and I want to use this opportunity to remind other Senators of the case of Ngawang Choephel, a Tibetan ethnomusicologist and former Middlebury College student. Mr. Choephel came to this country on a Fulbright Scholarship, and in September 1995 he was arrested in Tibet for making a film about traditional Tibetan music and dance. On December 26, 1996, just one month after I spoke to Chinese President Jiang Zemin personally about Mr. Choephel, he was sentenced after a secret trial to 18 years in prison.

This case goes to the heart of our ongoing difficulties with the Chinese Government on human rights. I have repeatedly asked for, and never received, a shred of evidence that Mr. Choephel was engaged in any illegal or political activity. His crime, it appears, was that he was Tibetan and wanted to preserve Tibetan culture.

Mr. President, every country has the right to prosecute individuals who engage in conduct that threatens the safety of others. But no country has the right to violate internationally recognized human rights which are the rights of all people regardless of nationality. As long as a person can be imprisoned for doing nothing more than making a film about Tibetan culture, our relations with China will continue to suffer. By releasing Mr. Choephel, the Chinese Government would risk nothing, but it would represent an important step to those of us who are looking for credible signs that the Chinese Government genuinely wants to improve its human rights record.

An April 21, 1998 editorial in the Rutland Daily Herald notes the release of Chinese dissident Wang Dan, and calls for the release of Ngawang Choephel. I ask that excerpts of the editorial be printed in the Record.

Don't Forget Tibet

The release of a leading dissident by the Chinese government has shown the Chinese leadership to be willing to make the right political gestures in anticipation of a visit later this spring by President Clinton.

Now is a good time to remind the Chinese that Americans believe Tibet to be an important human rights issue and that future relations with the United States would be improved by better treatment of Tibet. it is a good time, too, to remind the Chinese of a Tibetan with a Vermont connection who has been sentenced to serve 18 years in jail.

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Ngawang Choephel had fled Tibet with his mother when he was 2 years old. He eventually found his way to Middlebury College where he was a student of ethnomusiclogy. He returned to Tibet to record the music and dance of his native land, but he was arrested in the summer of 1995 and sentenced to 18 years.

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Releasing one or two well-known dissidents is not enough to establish a record of respect for human rights when other thousands remain behind prison walls for crimes no more offensive then the recording of folk songs.

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Ngawang Choephel is just one among thousands who remain behind. As long as he is not forgotten, Clinton and the Chinese may also remember how much more needs to be done before China has established itself as a nation with proper respect for the rights of the individual.