Tribune, Saturday, September 14, 1996

Dharamsala, Sept 13 - Nineteen Senators and Congressmen have urged Chinese Presidnt Jiang to release a renowned Tibetan musician, Ngawang Choephel, who has been detained by China in Tibet since September last.

Tibetans all over the world are organising campaigns to demand the release of Ngawang. According to a spokesman of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, here, Ngawang was arrested in Shigatse, Tibet's second largest town on September 16, last year.

Ngawang was a member of the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts(TIPA) and had gone on the prestigious Fulbright scholarship to study and teach ethnomusicology at middleburg College USA, in 1994. During his stay in the USA Ngawang raised funds to make a film on the oral traditions of the Tibetan music and was in Tibet to realise this dream of his.

Demanding his release, the Director of TIPA, Mr. Jamyang Dorjee said Ngawang was a talented musician. He said people were mystified by the fact that he had been imprisoned by the Chinese for the crime of recording traditional Tibetan folk music.

Ngawang was last seen in Tibet in the Shigatse prison on October 7 last year by Dorjee Rinchen, a Tibetan businessman who was also detained but was later released and is now in India. Ngawang went to Tibet with Katheryn Culley, a photographer who travelled with him during the early part of his Tibet trip. Before she left Tibet on August 22, Ngawang told her that he planned to visit Shigatse to look for musicians there.

Ngawang Choephel was first reported missing by his mother who travelled from South India to New Delhi to inquire about him. The news of his arrest spread quickly among his friends in India and in the USA. Before his study in the USA, Ngawang had released several tapes of traditional and modern Tibetan music which have become instant hits in the Tibetan communities in India and Nepal.