Melody in Prison: Ngawang Choephel
	UPDATE 2 January 1997

- Boston Globe 1 January 1997

Numerous news services carried the report of Ngawang Choephel's sentence, which ICT noted is "the third longest sentence ever given to a Tibetan since the end of the Cultural Revolution." The story was picked up by few newspapers or broadcast media - most notably The New York Times (where it was relegated to page 3) and ABC's World News Tonight. The Radio Tibet report did not specify when the sentence was issued by the Intermediate People's Court in Shigatse, Tibet's second-largest city. Many Tibet supporters surmised that the Chinese government had deliberately released the news at a time when few would be available to respond to it. What time could be better than the week between Christmas and New Year's Day?

News of the sentencing was further obscured by reports of the bombing of a government office in Lhasa on 25 December, which was variously ascribed to "the Dalai clique" (the PRC's denigrative term for the Tibetan government-in-exile and its supporters) and to PRC provocateurs. No matter who was responsible for the bombing, the confluence of the two events reminded many that, as a New York Times editorial on 2 January put it, "By smothering Tibetans' ability to speak, worship freely or express their culture, China risks driving them to violence."

The London-based Tibet Information Network (TIN) pointed out that Chinese authorities indicated no evidence to support the charges against Choephel other than to say that he had "confessed" to espionage activities. Bhungchung Tsering, a spokesperson for the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), dismissed Choepel's reported confession as insignificant because of likely duress: "Everyone knows that all confessions are imposed there [in China and Tibet]." Wendy Cook, Choephel's former fiancée, also dismissed claims that he had confessed to spying:

Either the confession is a complete fabrication or he's been tortured to force him to sign it. Ngawang was no spy. His great passion has always been Tibetan music and dance - not politics. The only reason for his visit to Tibet was to help preserve the traditional culture of his people.

A native of Australia, Cook currently resides in Boston, where she has given up other employment in order to campaign full-time for Choephel's release. She was visiting relatives in Melbourne when news of the sentence was released, and promptly appealed to Australia's foreign minister, Alexander Downer, to intervene on Choephel's behalf. Stewart John, president of the Australia Tibet Council, supported Cook's plea:

This case is an outrageous travesty of justice, even by Chinese standards. Ngawang Choephel has had no chance at all to defend himself. If the Australian and other Western governments don't intervene on his behalf, then the Chinese government will conclude that the international community no longer cares what human rights abuses it commits in Tibet.

Although the Radio Tibet broadcast did not identify Choephel's suspected foreign backers, last October's statements by the Chinese Ambassador to the United States left no doubt that the US was the "certain foreign country" - referred to three times in the broadcast - accused of providing funding and equipment for Choephel's alleged activities. Some viewed Choephel's sentence as a deliberate provocation of the US. Noting several instances in which US-Chinese trade and diplomatic agreements were followed by increased Chinese repression, the New York Times editorial commented that "Chinese officials seem to delight in taunting the United States over human rights issues."

It is debatable whether the response of the US Department of State was calculated to protect US interests in China or to avoid endangering Choephel. But in a daily press briefing on 27 December 1996, Acting State Department Spokesperson John Dinger took unmistakable pains to distance the US government from Choephel's plight. While expressing official "concern" about Choephel's sentencing and about "the preservation of Tibet's unique cultural, linguistic and religious heritage," Dinger denied that Choephel had any formal connections to the US government and, in noting that Choephel was not (as he said the press had reported) based in the United States, implied that Choephel had no significant connections to the country in general. Speaking on the record in what, according to the US Information Agency, was an informal, untranscribed briefing, Dinger added, "We do not have a lot of independent information on Mr. Choephel's activities, and there's no real reason that we should have a lot of independent information since he was not directly connected with the United States. I think I can assure you that he was not there (in Tibet) under US auspices - certainly not as a Fulbright scholar. And to the best of my knowledge, he was not there in any other activity connected with the United States."

News of Choephel's sentence was released only days after China's Defense Minister, General Chi Haotian, left the United States, where the Clinton administration had gone to great lengths to accord him a warm welcome. ICT Director John Ackerly commented: "Such an excessive sentence shows the failure of President Clinton's brand of constructive engagement. And his policy towards China will be even further weakened if he does not respond strongly to this sentence."

In a letter to the US Department of State, Lodi Gyari, the president of ICT, commented: "The harsh sentence passed on Ngawang, 18 years imprisonment, indicates the utter contempt the Chinese authories have for the fundamental rights of individual Tibetans. There was no way that Ngawang could have had a fair trial. I urge the State Department to come out clearly and strongly against this unjustified indictment."

Lodi Gyari's words were echoed by the editors of The New York Times:

To be sure, American officials have scolded Beijing about human rights issues in Tibet, Hong Kong and China itself. But the Chinese know they can safely ignore such talk. The Clinton Administration, unwilling to damage its relations with Beijing, has failed to impose any real cost on Chinese repression. Whether or not Beijing intended Ngawang Choepel's sentence as a specific message to Washington, Washington should read it as an indication of China's continuing contempt for its weak defense of Tibetan rights.