Melody in Prison: Ngawang Choephel
	UPDATE 27 September 2000

Reporters Sans Frontières, an international organization militating for freedom of the press, announced today that it has written to the Chinese minister of justice, Gao Changli, requesting Ngawang’s release. Below is the English-language version of the press release posted on their website. They are incorrect in stating that Ngawang’s funding came from an American university; as noted in our main article, he raised donations independently from private individuals.

In a letter sent today to the Chinese minister of justice, Gao Changli, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) asked for the release of Ngawang Choephel, arrested in 1995 in Tibet when he was shooting a documentary about Tibetan art. The organisation is deeply worried about the health of the Tibetan director detained in the Chengdu jail (province of Sichuan, south-western China). According to the Article 214 of the Chinese criminal procedure law a prisoner “can serve his sentence outside the prison if he is seriously ill.” Finally, RSF noted that in a document dated 18 January 2000 the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights emphasised that “imprisonment as punishment for the peaceful expression of an opinion constitutes a serious violation of human rights.”

According to the information collected by RSF, Ngawang Choephel, ethnomusicologist specialised in Tibetan dances and music, is seriously ill. The Chinese authorities admitted in 1999 that the prisoner was suffering of “bronchitis, pulmonary infection and hepatitis.” According to his mother, who visited him for the first time last August, for two hours, “he is very weak and is just skin and bones.” He may have tuberculosis. The state of his health is probably linked to the very hard conditions of detention at the high security jail of Powo Tramo, a forced labour camp where he was detained from July 1998 to June 2000. He has been tortured several times and the jail authorities have always refused medical attention.

Ngawang Choephel, an ethnomusicologist who used to live in the United States, was arrested in August 1995 in Shigatsé (Tibet province) while shooting a documentary about Tibetan culture. He had obtained a grant from an American university to make a photographic and video documentary about traditional Tibetan arts. Accused of “spying” and “counter revolutionary activities” by the Chinese authorities, he was sentenced to 18 years in jail. Ngawang Choephel always claimed his innocence and appealed twice against the sentence—without success.