Melody in Prison: Ngawang Choephel
	UPDATE 1 July 1998

On 29 May 29, Sonam Dekyi was hospitalized in Dharamsala for treatment of tuberculosis and acute depression, according to Mélanie Portet-Le Doze, a French graduate student who met her in Delhi earlier in the spring. The website of the Free Tibet Campaign–UK offers further details:

Until recently, Sonam Deckyi has been living on the pavement of Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, collecting signatures for her petition to the Chinese Embassy. Sonam Deckyi's situation and her fragile state of health have aroused the compassion of many visitors to Delhi, but she would not listen to their pleas that she leave the street. Max Flury, a friend of Ngawang's, achieved what many believed to be impossible. He arranged for Sonam Deckyi to receive hospital treatment in Delhi and, with the help of Tibetan nurse Choenyi Lhamo, persuaded her to go to Dharamsala for rest and recuperation. Free Tibet Campaign, helped by one of Tibet's most loyal friends, paid for her hospital care. We are now starting the long process of applying for the proper papers for Sonam Deckyi so that she can travel to Europe and the United States to take part in the international campaign for her son's release.

On 11 September, in an e-mail response to a query made by CHMOD, Richard Oppenheimer, director of Tibet Information Network, provided the reassuring news that "Sonam Dekyi is in 'reasonable health,' and is back in Delhi because she finds the climate there easier to take than that of Dharamsala. She did spend a month (June) in Delek Hospital in Dharamsala, more for a rest and to gather her strength, apparently, than because she was seriously ill."

Nevertheless, it must be assumed that the continued stress of uncertainty over Ngawang's condition, and of her campaign to see or free him, will continue to take its toll on Sonam Dekyi's fragile physical and mental condition until she can be assured by her own eyes that her son is healthy, safe and free.

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Photograph of Sonam Dekyi © 1998 Mélanie Portet-Le Doze.