Boston Globe 13 September 1996 - By WENDY COOK

Submitted by Wendy Cook <103053.20@CompuServe.COM

Riding my bicycle along the Charles River to the Cambridge River Festival, cool wind on my face, legs pumping, breathing deeply, I remember a time in 1987 when I cycled with my Tibetan friend, Ngawang Choephel, as he showed me around the village in southern India where he was brought up in exile.

It is a bittersweet memory, for Ngawang disappeared one year ago this week, while on a trip to his homeland to make a documentary about Tibetan music and dance. To date, Chinese authorities have not provided one scrap of information about his whereabouts or his well being.

Disappeared. It's hard to say that word. The uncertainty of his situation fills my heart with outrage. It happened like this: In 1993 Ngawang won a Fulbright scholarship to study ethnomusicology at Middlebury College in Vermont. Those were bright times. Ngawang often came to Boston to visit, teach music classes and perform. He told me that his deepest wish was to return to Tibet and record for posterity the traditional performing arts of his culture that he feared would be lost because of Chinese oppression. He had left Tibet on his mother's back at age 2 as repression during the Cultural Revolution worsened. he had not been back since.

At Middlebury, Ngawang's quietly determined enthusiasm delighted students, faculty and town residents. He made strong friendships there, while gaining confidence and skills to carry out his dreams of returning to Tibet.. In July 1995, he and an American photographer traveled there. The details of what happened next remain sketchy. At some point, Ngawang was detained. He was last seen in a prison in Shigatse, a town west of Lhasa.

As a refugee, Ngawang had no passport and had traveled on an Indian Identity Certificate to the United States. The Chinese government does not recognize the Indian certificate, which designates the holder as a ``Tibetan exile.'' China requires Tibetans to use ``Overseas Chinese'' travel papers when visiting or returning to Tibet. Those papers and his video equipment were confiscated..

This we know from a Tibetan businessman who was also detained but later released. Ngawang managed to send out 16 hours of video tape showing scenes of village dances, Tibetans singing in fields and ancient Buddhist rituals. The videos contain no political material.

The first anniversary of Ngawang's detention is being marked in New England and elsewhere. In Cambridge, concerned people will gather at Friends Meeting Place in Longfellow Park on Monday at 7:30 p.m. A newly released film, ``Missing in Tibet'' which portrays Ngawang's plight and features footage he shot in Tibet, will be shown in more than 35 towns and cities. We hope that this outpouring of concern will win freedom for Ngawang and promote a change in the government's halfhearted stance on human rights abuses in Tibet.

No one knows why Ngawang was arrested. Chinese authorities have not replied to inquiries from Amnesty International, the International Campaign for Tibet or the Vermont congressional delegation. Sen. John Kerry, the most senior Democrat on the subcommittee that authorizes the Fulbright Tibet program, and Sen. Edward Kennedy are drafting a joint letter on Ngawang's behalf. It would seem that the US bears some responsibility in accounting of demanding accountability for his whereabouts and well being in having encouraged his scholarly endeavor. Yet, it can be difficult to maintain one's motivation to work for human rights when the Clinton administration's policy seems callous, exemplified by delinking human rights conditions from its renewal of China's most favored nation status. There must be a way to maintain trade while putting pressure on China to improve their human rights record.

When I think of Ngawang I remember his beautiful voice singing Tibetan songs. I remember how impressed I was by his desire, as a first-generation Tibetan growing up in exile, to preserve his heritage.

Human rights abuse is no longer an abstract concept to me and many others in New England who knew Ngawang. We are interconnected and citizen campaigns are important in this age when Washington and Beijing are more concerned with cutting business deals.

Nowadays when I ride my bicycle around Boston I cannot help but think of Ngawang in a small, cold, dark prison cell. I will not be comforted until I hear my friend sing again. But the songs are somewhere behind bars in Tibet.

(Wendy Cook, a Brookline resident, is working full time on the campaign to release Ngawang Choephel.)