Political Quotes

“Mr. Choephel is a Tibetan man who studied ethnomusicology at Middlebury College at Middlebury, VT, on a Fulbright scholarship in 1993, and I should tell my colleagues that when he was at Middlebury College he made a whole lot of friends, and a lot of folks in Middlebury and throughout the State of Vermont are very concerned about his fate. In the summer of 1995 he returned to Tibet to make a nonpolitical documentary film about traditional Tibetan music and dance because he was concerned that his cultural heritage was being forgotten. In the fall of 1995 he was arrested and held incommunicado in a Chinese prison for 1 year until he was accused of espionage last October and sentenced last December. Mr. Chairman, Ngawang Choephel's only crime was to film dancers in Tibet, but the Chinese Government as part of its long-term campaign to stomp out all remnants of Tibetan cultural identity has accused Mr. Choephel of espionage and sentenced him to 18 years in prison for filming dance in Tibet, and followed by 7 years deprivation of political rights. This is the most severe sentence given a Tibetan in over 7 years. Mr. Chairman, the State Department agrees that there is no known evidence Mr. Choephel committed any crime. This is simply one more example of an outrageous human rights abuse in China.”