[Congressional Record: January 21, 1997 (Senate)]
[Page S567-S568]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
SENATE RESOLUTION 19--RELATIVE TO GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC
OF CHINA
Mr. MOYNIHAN (for himself, Mr. Helms, Mr. Leahy, Mr. Jeffords, Mr.
Dodd, Mr. Feingold, and Mr. Wellstone) submitted the following
resolution: which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations:
S. Res. 19
Whereas the Chinese Government sentenced Ngawang Choephel
to an 18 year prison term plus four years subsequent
deprivation of his political rights on December 26, 1996,
following a secret trail;
Whereas Mr. Choephel is a Tibetan national whose family
fled Chinese oppression to live in exile in India in 1968;
Whereas Mr. Choephel, studied ethnomusicology at Middlebury
College in Vermont as a Fulbright Scholar, and at the Tibetan
Institute of Performing Arts in Dharamsala, India;
Whereas Mr. Choephel returned to Tibet in July, 1995 to
prepare a documentary film about traditional Tibetan
performing arts;
Whereas Mr. Choephel was detained in August, 1995 by the
Chinese authorities and held incommunicado for over a year
before the Government of the People's Republic of China
admitted to holding him, and finally charged him with
espionage in October, 1996;
Whereas there is no evidence that Mr. Choephel's activities
in Tibet involved anything other than purely academic
research;
Whereas the Government of the People's Republic of China
denies Tibetans their fundamental human rights, as reported
in the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights
Practices, and by human rights organizations including
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, Asia;
Whereas the Government of the People's Republic of China is
responsible for the destruction of much of Tibetan
civilization since its invasion of Tibet in 1949;
Whereas the arrest of Tibetan scholar, such as Mr. Choephel
who worked to preserve Tibetan culture, reflects the
systematic attempt by the Government of the People's Republic
of China to repress cultural expression in Tibet;
Whereas the Government of the People's Republic of China,
through direct and indirect incentives, has established
discriminatory development programs which have resulted in an
overwhelming flow of Chinese immigrants into Tibet, including
those areas incorporated into the Chines provinces of
Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu, and Quinghai, and have excluded
Tibetans from participation in important policy decisions,
which further threatens traditional Tibetan life;
Whereas the Government of the People's Republic of China
withholds meaningful participation in the governance of Tibet
from Tibetans and has failed to abide by its own
constitutional guarantee of autonomy of Tibetans;
Whereas the Dalai Lama of Tibet has stated his willingness
to enter into negotiations with the Chinese and has
repeatedly accepted the framework Deng Xiaoping proposed for
such negotiations in 1979;
Whereas the United States Government has not developed an
effective plan to win support in international fora, such as
the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, to bring
international pressure to bear on the Government of the
People's Republic of China to improve human rights and to
negotiate with the Dalai Lama;
Whereas the Chinese have displayed provocative disregard
for American concerns by arresting and sentencing prominent
dissidents around the time that senior United States
Government officials have visited China;
Whereas United States Government policy seeks to foster
negotiations between the Government of the People's Republic
of China and the Dalai Lama, and presses China to respect
Tibet's unique religious, linguistic and cultural traditions.
Now, therefore, be it hereby
Resolved by the Senate that, It is the sense of the Senate
that--
(1) Ngawang Choephel and other prisoners of conscience in
Tibet, as well as in China, should be released immediately
and unconditionally;
(2) to underscore the gravity of this matter, in all
official meetings with representatives of the Government of
the People's Republic of China, U.S. officials should request
Mr. Choephel's immediate and unconditional release;
(3) the United States Government should take prompt action
to sponsor and promote a resolution at the United Nations
Commission on Human Rights regarding China and Tibet which
specifically addresses political prisoners and negotiations
with the Dalai Lama;
(4) an exchange program should be established in honor on
Ngawang Choephel, involving students of the Tibetan Institute
of Performing Arts and appropriate educational institutions
in the United States; and,
(5) the United States Government should seek access for
internationally recognized human rights groups to monitor
human rights in Tibet.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise to submit a resolution in
response to the egregious prison sentence which was recently imposed by
the Chinese Government on Ngawang Choephel.
Mr. Choephel is a Tibetan whose family fled Chinese oppression to
live in exile in India in 1968. He studied ethnomusicology at
Middlebury College in Vermont as a Fulbright Scholar in 1992 and 1993,
after having studied at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts in
Dharamsala, India. The Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts was formed
by the Dalai Lama to preserve the Tibetan performing arts while in
exile.
Mr. Choephel returned to Tibet in July, 1995 to prepare a documentary
film about traditional Tibetan performing arts. He was detained in
August, 1995 by the Chinese authorities and held incommunicado for over
a year before the Government of the People's Republic of China admitted
to holding him, and finally charged him with espionage in October,
1996.
On December 26, 1996, the Chinese Government sentenced Ngawang
Choephel to an 18 year prison term plus four years subsequent
deprivation of his political rights following a secret trial. This is
the most severe sentence of a Tibetan by the Chinese Government in
seven years.
There is no evidence that Mr. Choephel's activities in Tibet involved
anything other than purely academic research. His arrest and the long
sentence subsequently imposed appear to stem from his collecting
information to preserve Tibetan performing arts. Such censure is
indicative of the extreme measures the Chinese Government continues to
take to repress all forms of Tibetan cultural expression. My daughter,
Maura Moynihan, has traveled to Tibet several times. After her most
recent trip last year, she wrote in the Washington Post of the Chinese
assault on Tibetan religion and culture:
Beijing's leaders have renewed their assault on Tibetan
culture, especially Buddhism, with an alarming vehemence. The
rhetoric and the methods of the Cultural Revolution of the
1960s have been resurrected--reincarnated, what you will--to
shape an aggressive campaign to vilify the Dalai Lama.
[[Page S568]]
The New York Times echoed just such sentiments in its January 2
editorial on Ngawang Choephel's arrest:
The basis of Ngawang Choepel's conviction is unclear, but
even taping Tibetan culture for export could qualify as
espionage under Chinese law. Since its invasion of Tibet in
1950, Beijin has gradually increased its efforts to erase
Tibet's identity. China has arrested those who protested the
takeover and tried to eradicate the people's affection for
the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama.
Ngawang Choephel is a symbol of the Chinese Government's continued
pursuit of Maoist policies when dealing with what it sees at the
``Tibet problem.'' Tibetan religion and culture are seen by the Chinese
as an impediment to successfully unifying Tibet with the
``motherland.''
This resolution will record the United States Senate's response to
these Chinese policies, which we reject. In the words of the
International Commission of Jurists in 1960, ``Tibet demonstrated from
1913 to 1950 the conditions of statehood as generally accepted under
international law.'' We will continue to stand with the Tibetan people.
As the Senate recorded in 1991 in S. Res. 107:
* * * the government of the People's Republic of China should
know that as the Tibetan people and His Holiness the Dalai
Lama of Tibet go forward on their journey toward freedom the
Congress and the people of the United States stand with them.
I thank all my colleagues who have cosponsored this resolution. In
particular I would like to recognize the long commitment that the
Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee has shown in support of
Tibetans and thank him for joining me in this effort today.
I would especially note the work of the senior Senator from Vermont,
Mr. Leahy. Since Mr. Choephel was reported missing, Senator Leahy has
sought to win his release. In November, Senator Leahy, while traveling
on a delegation to China with the Senate Democratic Leader and other
Senators, raised his concerns directly to Chinese President Jiang
Zemin. I thank Senator Leahy for his commitment to this issue and for
agreeing to cosponsor this measure.
I ask unanimous consent to have the New York Times editorial on this
subject placed in the Record.
[From the New York Times, Jan. 2, 1997]
A Prison Term in Tibet
Last week, the Chinese Government gave a 30-year-old
scholar of Tibetan music an 18-year prison sentence for
espionage. Even by Chinese standards, the sentence is
astonishingly long. It is also a warning to Tibetans that
their already scarce liberties are now further endangered.
Ngawang Choepel fled Tibet with his family when he was 2 to
the Tibetan exile community in Dharmsala, India. He came to
the United States in 1993 to study and teach at Middlebury
College. In 1995 he went to Tibet to capture on video
traditional songs and dances that he feared were being lost.
The basis of Ngawang Choepel's conviction is unclear, but
even taping Tibetan culture for export could qualify as
espionage under Chinese law. Since its invasion of Tibet in
1950, Beijing has gradually increased its efforts to erase
Tibet's identity. China has arrested those who protested the
takeover and tried to eradicate the people's affection for
the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama.
In the 1960's and 1970's, the Chinese killed thousands of
monks and nuns and destroyed virtually all Tibet's
monasteries. China later tried a slightly softer line, but
riots in 1987 brought another crackdown. Monks have been
asked to redpudiate the Dalai Lama or face expulsion, and at
least 700 Tibetans are now in prison for political offenses.
China's repressive policy is wrong both morally and
politically. By smothering Tibetans' ability to speak,
worship freely, or express their culture, China risks driving
them to violence. Last week, a powerful, sophisticated bomb
blew up outside a Government building in Lhasa. Although the
Dalai Lama has never wavered in his commitment to nonviolence
and denies any link to the bomb, he Government quickly blamed
the bomb on ``the Dalai clique'' and has vowed to retaliate.
The Chinese Government went out of its way to link Ngawang
Choepel to the United States, charging that Americans
underwrote his trip and that he was gathering information for
a foreign agency. Indeed, Chinese officials seem to delight
in taunting the United States over human rights issues.
During a visit by Secretary of State Warren Christopher in
1994, Beijing arrested China's leading democracy campaigner,
Wei Jingsheng. In May of that year, Washington ended the
linkage between China's behavior on human rights and its
preferential trading status. Only two months later, hard-
liners at a Communist Party meeting pushed through a policy
that increased Chinese control of Tibet.
To be sure, American officials have scolded Beijing about
human rights abuses in Tibet, Hong Kong, and China itself.
But the Chinese know they can safely ignore such talk. The
Clinton Administration, unwilling to damage its relations
with Beijing, has failed to impose any real cost on Chinese
repression. Whether or not Beijing intended Ngawang Choepel's
sentence as a specific message to Washington, Washington
should read it as an indication of China's continuing
contempt for its weak defense of Tibetan rights.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Moynihan for
submitting this resolution on the first legislative day of the 105th
Congress in support of Ngawang Choephel and other prisoners of
conscience in Tibet.
I first learned about the detention of Tibetan music and dance
scholar and former Middlebury College student Ngawang Choephel about a
year ago. Students and faculty at Middlebury were leading a letter-
writing campaign to urge Chinese authorities to release information
about their friend and colleague, who had traveled in 1995 to Tibet to
make a documentary film of traditional Tibetan dance and music after
spending several months as a Fulbright scholar at Middlebury. No one
had seen or herd from Mr. Choephel, until an exiled Tibetan reported
seeing him in a Tibetan prison.
I wrote to the head of the Chinese Communist Party to find out what I
could about Mr. Choephel's whereabouts, his health, the evidence
against him, and whether he had access to a lawyer. I received no
reply. I inquired further. Finally, in October, more than a year after
his detention, Chinese authorities reported that Mr. Choephel was
charged with violating the State Security Law. He was accused of
espionage, and it was insinuated that he was a spy financed by the
United States Government. No evidence to support such a claim has ever
been produced. The State Department issued a statement calling for Mr.
Choephel's release.
There is no evidence that Mr. Choephel was engaged in any improper
activity or even any political activity whatsoever during his trip to
Tibet. The 16 hours of film Mr. Choephel sent to India during the first
weeks of his project contain the traditional music and dance that he
intended to document. Like the State Department, I believe that the
Chinese have made a terrible mistake in this case.
In November, I accompanied Senator Daschle on a trip to China. In
meetings with President Jiang Zemin and other officials, I raised
Ngawang Choephel's case and urged the President to look into it
personally. I have received no response to those inquiries. Only weeks
after returning from Beijing, I learned that Mr. Choephel had been
sentenced to 18 years in prison, and I immediately wrote again to
President Jiang Zemin, urging that Mr. Choephel be released.
Mr. Choephel's reported confession, secret trial, and unusually long
prison sentence underscore the longstanding disregard for the rule of
law and the lack of respect for political and cultural rights in Tibet
and China. Mr. Choephel is one of thousands who have been persecuted
for attempting to preserve what remains of Tibetan culture.
The resolution introduced by Senator Moynihan calls on the Chinese
Government to release Mr. Choephel unconditionally. It also calls on
United States officials to raise his case in all meetings with Chinese
authorities, to support a resolution on human rights in Tibet and China
in the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, to urge the Chinese
to allow international human rights groups to monitor human rights in
Tibet, and to support an exchange program for Tibetan students.
These are measures that will emphasize the importance the United
States Senate places on improving respect for human rights in China and
Tibet. It is particularly important that the administration takes a
stronger position in support of the resolution on China and Tibet in
the U.N. Human Rights Commission this year.
Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Moynihan again for his concern
and his leadership on Tibet over the years. I urge all Senators to
support this resolution.
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