(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to the Chinese minister of justice, Gao Changli, RSF asked for the release of Ngawang Choephel, arrested in 1995 in Tibet while he was shooting a documentary about Tibetan art. The organisation is deeply worried about the health of the Tibetan director, who is detained at the Chengdu jail (province […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to the Chinese minister of justice, Gao Changli, RSF asked for the release of Ngawang Choephel, arrested in 1995 in Tibet while he was shooting a documentary about Tibetan art. The organisation is deeply worried about the health of the Tibetan director, who is detained at the Chengdu jail (province of Sichuan, south-western China). According to Article 214 of Chinese criminal 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 information collected by RSF, Ngawang Choephel, an ethnomusicologist specialised in Tibetan dances and music, is seriously ill. The Chinese authorities admitted in 1999 that he was suffering from “bronchitis, pulmonary infection and hepatitis”. According to his mother, who visited him for two hours last August, “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 refused to allow him to seek 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 eighteen years in jail. Ngawang Choephel has always claimed his innocence and twice unsuccessfuly appealed against his sentence.
