[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 4 (Tuesday, January 21, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S567-S568]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.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.

                          ____________________