Melody in Prison: Ngawang Choephel
	UPDATE 10 May 1999

The following article by Joyce Morgan was published by the Sydney Morning Herald.

Tibetan groups have called for a boycott of a tour by a Tibetan performing arts troupe, describing it as Chinese propaganda.

The China Tibetan Performing Arts Troupe will perform in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne next month as part of an Australasian tour. A tour organiser defended the performances as a rare opportunity to see Tibetan music and dance.

"There's not often Tibetan performers from Tibet travelling internationally for various reasons," said Stuart Brown, assistant manager of the Australia-China International Exchange Centre.

The Dalai Lama's Australian representative, Chope Paljor Tsering, condemned the tour, saying it came as Tibet's culture was being brutally erased by its Chinese rulers.

"Culturally Tibet is being strangled to death," Tsering said. "There is no room for the Tibetans to carry on any independent cultural activities without interference and influences from the Chinese."

Tsering called for a boycott of the tour and said the continued imprisonment of a young Tibetan musicologist and Fulbright scholar showed how difficult it was for Tibetans to freely express their culture. Ngawang Choephel, who had been recording Tibetan songs, was jailed for 18 years last year, accused of spying.

"This shows how intolerant they are when it is actually involved with the study of real art and culture," Tsering said.

Aspects of the troupe's performance, which involve the presentation of Buddhist rituals, were offensive to Tibetans, he said.

"Religious instruments are used during religious performance but when you use them for entertainment that is a means to marginalise. It is an insult," Tsering said.

The Australia Tibet Council backed the boycott call. The tour was a "classic piece of Chinese propaganda", according Paul Bourke, the council's executive director.

"It is meant to show they (the Chinese) care about Tibetan culture. But in Tibet people trying to preserve their culture are imprisoned and tortured and language - the basis of any culture - is being phased out," he said.

He believed the tour was an attempt to draw attention away from significant Chinese and Tibetan anniversaries this year, including the 40th anniversary of the flight into exile of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual and political leader, as well as the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The tour, which begins with an Opera House performance on June 20, is being staged a week after international Tibet Freedom Concerts, designed to highlight increasing political repression in Tibet, are held in Sydney, Tokyo, Amsterdam and Chicago on June 13.

Brown said there was no significance in the timing of the tour, but acknowledged the organisers, who will hold a press conference today, were aware of local Tibetan opposition. "I know they are concerned about the political issues, but this is a performance group that has been around for quite a few years in Tibet. They are always performing in Tibet," he said.