College, Local Communities Fete Choephel's Return to Campus

Author: Tim McCahill

Almost a month after being released from a prison hospital in southwestern China, former Fulbright scholar Ngawang Choephel returned to Middlebury College and was celebrated at a reception held in his honor held on the bottom floor of The Grille.

Choephel, who is trained as an ethnomusicologist, studied and taught at the College between 1993 and 1994, returning to Tibet in 1995 to research traditional Tibetan music culture for a film documentary. Shortly afterwards he was arrested by Chinese authorities and sentenced to 18 years in prison for suspected espionage. With the scholar's health rapidly declining, Choephel was transferred to a prison hospital in the Chinese city of Chengdu in the summer of 2000.

During what would turn out to be his final months in detention, numerous human rights groups in the United States, including the College's chapter of Students for a Free Tibet (SFT), lobbied vigorously for his release.

This lobbying increased to fever pitch in the autumn of last year as groups like the San Francisco-based nonprofit Dui Hua Foundation pushed even more intensively for medical parole for the scholar, which, according to director of the Foundation John Kamm, is permitted under Chinese law.

"The regulation allows for medical parole of prisoners who contract serious illnesses while in prison, and who have served at least one-third of their terms," Kamm explained in the Jan. 30, 2002, edition of The Middlebury Campus.

Choephel returned to the United States on Jan. 21 in good health but requiring medical examination, which he received in the days following his arrival.

The bottom floor of The Grille was filled almost to capacity yesterday as students, faculty, staff and members of the local community gathered to welcome Choephel, a man who has become not only a symbol of China's criticized human rights record but also recognized for his contributions to both the College and the state of Vermont.

"Thank you for coming here and sharing this time with me," Choephel said at the reception. "You make Middlebury a place that I will always hold in warm regard. Thank you very much for the hard work you have done, and sharing your concern for my mother [Sonam Dekyi, who lives in New Delhi, India]."

"It was entirely my decision to go into Tibet," Choephel continued. "I appealed strongly to the High Court of the Tibet Autonomous Court and the Supreme Court of China that I was not sent by His Holiness the Dalai Lama's administration into Tibet [following his arrest and imprisonment]."

The scholar briefly explained his rationale for traveling to the region, saying "I had no other mission to go into Tibet except to research and document Tibetan traditional music and do pre-production for my [documentary] project." He went on to thank members of the College and local communities, as well as alumni, for organizing the reception in his honor and pushing for his release.

Choephel's statement was preceeded by Tenzin Wangyal '03.5, a Tibetan student and member of the College's chapter of SFT, who sang a song written by Choephel along with Tenzin Dorjee, also a Tibetan studying at Brown University. This was preceded by remarks from Louisa Conrad '04, president of SFT and photo editor for The Campus, and Assistant Manager of Dining Services at Proctor Hall Kit Quesnel.

Wangyal said after the reception that he was "very happy that everything worked out. Our prayers were answered." He mentioned that Choephel would remain in the United States for another two to three months before traveling to India to visit his mother.

Former director of the Tibetan Resettlement Program in Burlington Jim Kelly, who met Choephel during his time at Middlebury and visited him in India shortly before he traveled to Tibet in 1995, expressed his excitement at his friend's return to Vermont. "This is wonderful. It was such a tragedy that he was taken to prison," Kelly said. "The allegation [of espionage] was ludicrous. He has such a passion for [Tibetan] music and culture."

Posang Thondrup, president of the Tibetan Association of Vermont, echoed Kelly's sentiment. "I was very glad and happy to see [the news of Choephel's release] in the newspaper," Thondrup said. "I hoped he would come here."

While small, Vermont's Tibetan community has blossomed since the early 1990s and now includes some 74 people, including children, living primarily in Burlington. Thondrup has lived in the United States for four years.

The reception was coordinated by the College's Office of Public Affairs, with assistance from Senior Adviser and Associate Provost for Institutional Diversity Leroy Nesbitt, who also attended the ceremony.

It was followed by an open dinner at Redfield Proctor Lounge.