Word: choephel
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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SENTENCED. NGAWANG CHOEPHEL, 30, a Tibetan music scholar, to 18 years in prison by the Chinese government; for espionage. Choephel fled Tibet as a child but returned in 1995 to make a documentary about traditional music--only to be caught up in a crackdown...
...China resumed their dialogue over human rights last October, and the Bush Administration has handed lists of political prisoners to Beijing it wants released. The pressure has seemed to pay off. In the weeks before Bush's arrival, China freed three prisoners: Tibetan musicologist and Fulbright scholar Ngawang Choephel, Wang Ce of the banned China Democracy Party and a Hong Kong man, Lai Kwong-keung, who had been sentenced to two years in jail for smuggling unauthorized versions of the Bible into the mainland...
RELEASED. NGAWANG CHOEPHEL, 34, Tibetan music scholar who served six years of an 18-year prison term on charges of spying and opposing Chinese rule over Tibet; in Sichuan province. The Fulbright scholar, who was imprisoned following his return to Tibet to videotape traditional music and dance, received wide media attention before his unexpected reprieve...
...Choephel may be alone in his cell, but he's not alone in his predicament. According to the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy, more than 1,000 Tibetans, mostly political prisoners, are being held in Chinese jails. Like Choephel, most have been denied legal representation and contact with their families, and many have been tortured. Choephel's case won some early press attention: in 1997, Congress passed a resolution condemning his imprisonment, and then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made a personal plea to Beijing for his release. But today Choephel is still being held in a remote...
China claims that Choephel's research was a pretext for collecting sensitive information. The official news report of his sentence concluded he had been sent "by the Dalai [Lama] clique with expenditures and equipment provided by a certain foreign country." But shortly before his disappearance, Choephel sent the first 16 hours of his videotapes out of the country with American tourists. The tapes show folk songs and dances that seem to pose little threat to any country's national security...