Ngawang Chophel

Ngawang Choephel is a Tibetan ethnomusicologist, filmmaker, and political prisoner. Choephel was born in Tibet in 1966, but his family fled to India in 1968. He later went to the USA to study ethnomusicology through the Fulbright program in 1993 and 1994 at Middlebury College. He returned to Tibet in 1995 to make a film on traditional music and dance. He was later arrested by the Chinese in September 1995 on spying charges and held incommunicado and without trial for over 14 months. Then in late 1996, he was sentenced in a secret trial to 18 years in prison for "espionage and counter-revolutionary activities". The Chinese authorities have not produced evidence to support the charges against him. In August 2000 his mother and his uncle...