China Frees Tibetan Scholar From Prison

Chinese authorities released a Tibetan music scholar jailed six years on espionage charges and sent him to the U.S. on Sunday, just one month before President Bush is to visit China.

U.S. legislators, in letters to the Chinese government, had repeatedly raised the case of Ngawang Choephel, a former Fulbright scholar at Middlebury College in Vermont.

Choephel, 34, was released on medical parole from a prison in Sichuan province. He flew from Beijing to Detroit, then on to Washington, where he was met at Reagan National Airport by Lodi Gyari, special envoy of the Dalai Lama, and Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.), who had personally lobbied the Chinese government for Choephel’s release.

“Obviously they wanted to make an important gesture,” Jeffords told Associated Press. “But whatever, he’s out.”

In a memo on the release, San Francisco-based human rights activist John Kamm said: “I am not aware of any Tibetan prisoners who have ever been released on medical parole, much less sent abroad for medical treatment. No Tibetan prisoner has been released into the custody of the U.S.”

Kamm, who had also campaigned on Choephel’s behalf, said he was informed by Chinese officials that Choephel’s release represented a “test case” in human rights cooperation between the United States and China.

Choephel’s case was on a “list of concerns” presented to Beijing by U.S. officials before Secretary of State Colin L. Powell visited China in July. His case was also discussed in October.

Although the release was apparently timed to improve ties with Washington ahead of Bush’s Feb. 21-22 visit to China, Kamm said Chinese officials informed him Dec. 17--before the visit had been publicly announced--that Choephel was likely to be freed.

Choephel, a native of Tibet, entered the region from India in 1995 saying he intended to videotape traditional Tibetan music and dance. He was detained several months later, and in December 1996, he was convicted on charges of espionage and spreading counterrevolutionary propaganda. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Kamm said Choephel was released under a Chinese prison regulation that allows for medical parole of inmates who have served part of their sentences and have become ill in prison. China has previously released political prisoners on medical parole as concessions to international opinion.

Kamm said Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, who had met with Jeffords about Choephel’s case in 1999, when he was ambassador to the United States, informed the Vermont congressional delegation that Choephel had bronchitis, hepatitis and a pulmonary infection.

Choephel plans to seek medical treatment in the U.S., Kamm said, then return to India, where his mother lives in exile.