Eighteen Years for Song and Dance

I remember hearing stories my mother told me about dangerous times in China: first during the Japanese occupation during World War II, and then after the communist revolution led by Mao Tse-tung. So oddly nonchalant was her account that the stories felt as if they were about someone else. It wasn't until I met Sonam Dekyi on the streets of New Delhi, India did I learn the true nature of political oppression. Dekyi is the mother of imprisoned musician Ngawang Choephel, a Fulbright scholar who journeyed back to his native Tibet to video-tape traditional Tibetan music and culture.

Her son was reported missing in Tibet in August 1995. Dekyi, however, waited 14 months before she discovered he was still alive. Choephel had been jailed in a Chinese prison inside Tibet on charges of "espionage." He is accused of of spying on behalf of Tibet's exiled leader, the Dalai Lama and "a certain foreign country" - apparently an allusion to the United States.

Since then, the 62-year-old Dekyi has campaigned continuously for the right to see her son. Her fight has attracted global attention; thousands of appeals have been forwarded to Chinese authorities. All have been met with silence.

In 1998, Hansa Natola, an Italian Tibet supporter, introduced me to Dekyi in New Dehli. Dekyi was sitting alone on Parliament Street, handing out petitions and leaflets written in English and Hindi, flanked by a crude lean-to tent that faced the luxurious Park Hotel.

Dekyi left her home in Mundgod, in southern India, in June of 1997. She began living on the streets of India's capital city, appealing to anyone who might help her obtain her son's release. She pulled out an 8" x 10" color photograph of him to show me, wrapped her arms around the frame, pressed it against her breast and began to cry, explaining the details of his arrest. Natola and I began to call her "Mom," and paused daily on our way to the Tibetan hunger strike, greeting her in Tibetan: "Tashi Delag" (Good day)

During her effort to find her son, Dekyi contracted tuberculosis, but she discounts her health problems, saying she is an old woman who only wants to "meet my son one last time, before I die."

While doing the pre-production work on the Tibetan hunger strike that brought me to India on the Internet in the United States, I learned about Dekyi's harrowing history. During the 1960s, Dekyi escaped Chinese brutality carrying two-year-old Ngawang Choephel on her back across the Himalayas to freedom in India. http://savetibet.org/ngawang.html Dekyi devoted her life to caring for and educating her only child in a Tibetan refugee camp. Her efforts paid off; Ngawang's passion for Tibetan arts surfaced in elementary school. He taught music at the Tibetan Institute for the Performing Arts as a young man in Dharamsala. Later, he earned the prestigious Fulbright scholarship to study ethnomusicology in the United States at Middlebury College in Vermont.

Ngawang Choephel always felt a duty to preserve the cultural identity of Tibet through it's music and performing arts. At 30, without telling hismother, he armed himself with a video camera and tape recorder and entered Tibet, knowing a returning Tibetan exile could be imprisoned on the slightest provocation. Before Choephel's arrest, he gave his video tapes from two months of travel to an American traveler, fearing they would be confiscated if they were found in his possesion. The tapes show old men on mountain tops performing opera to the wind, little girls singing nursery rhymes and lamas doing wrathful dances to chase off demons.

"In 16-hours of Mr. Choephel's video footage, not a single scene exists indicating that he was involved in any political activity whatsoever. His extensive photographic record shows he was soley engaged in cultural documentation," according to John Ackerly, president of the International Campaign for Tibet in Washington, D.C. http://www.savetibet.org/

After I left India, Natola and I conducted a long - distance interview of Dekyi: I wrote questions, e-mailed them to Natola and she interviewed Dekyi through a translator. Then Natola e-mailed the Q&A back to me in the United States. Here is our conversation from Parliament Street, New Delhi, India in April 1998.

Postscript

Choephel felt passionately it was his life's duty to preserve his dying Tibetan culture inside Tibet. He legally entered Tibet on a Chinese visa in June of 1995 and began recording what was left of traditional music and dance with his video camera.

His act touched me in a way I had not expected. Choephel did exactly what I would have done if I were Tibetan. Choephel was a gifted musician, teacher and scholar at Middlebury College in Vermont. He was last reportedly seen in Drapchi prison near Lhasa. Obsevers say he looked in poor health. Former prisoners and human rights groups report that Drapchi prison is a place where torture, rape, poor diet and living conditions are commonplace. I met Sonam Dekyi as she was working for her son's release. She was sitting on a mat, next to a lean-to tent made out of blue plastic. She faced a five star hotel and was begging - not for money but signatures on a petition she was gathering to send to Chinese president Jiang Zemin. She maintained her vigil about 50 yards from the hunger striker's tent. Because she wants her sacrifice to be thorough and pure, she lives on a meager diet of donated food. The only expenditure she allows herself is purchasing paper for the petitions.

She contracted tuberculosis during her campaign and because of failing health fears she won't live long enough to see her son released. I journeyed to India to cover the dramatic struggle of the life and death hunger strike, but came away even more moved by the simple sacrifice of this tenacious mother.

Eugene H. Louie is an award winning photojournalist at the San Jose Mercury News, San Jose California. Mr. Louie met Sonam Dekyi in New Delhi, India while photographing a Tibetan hunger strike in March, 1998. He continues to work for her son's release.

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An Interview with Sonam Dekyi

Q&A

Q: Why this specific spot?
A: The reason I am here is that thisis a place where all people from all over the world come. In this particular street I would like to appeal to every single person who comes here to help me to get the Chinese to release him, or for me to meet him. I would like permission from the Chinese government to meet my son who is innocent.

Q: I read in your appeal that you actually went to the Chinese Embassy here to ask for a visa to enter Tibet, but they told you to wait. Have you received a reply?
A: I went to the embassy in January 1996 and I met a tall looking person there and I asked him if he could give me permission to vist my son. What he said is that I would have to wait 4 or 5 months. After that he would give me the permission. Since then, I went back at least three times, and the last time I went was in August 1997, and again there was no word from them.

Q: Did you visit the Embassy alone or did you go with someone?
A: The first time I went to the Embassy there were three people helpig me. The second time I went alone, and the last time I went with my brother.

Q: What do you do with the petitions that people sign?
A: I plan to offer them to the United Nations.

Q: How many pages have you collected so far?
A: About one thousand.

Q: How long are you going to wait before you present them to the United Nations?
A: I have been collecting these petitions for almost one year. I am now planning to wait one, or two months, and then present them to the U.N.

Q: Do you know whom to approach at the United Nations?
A: I don't know whom I should be presenting them to, but I plan to be taking the assistance of Indian, as well as Tibetan, well wishers from here.

Q: How long do you think you will live here on the pavement?
A: I plan to stay here on the street until some fruit comes out of this effort I am making: Until my son is released by the Chinese.

Q: Would you accept some kind of promise from the Chinese government that your son will be released soon?
A: I cannot trust them 100%, so until my son is really released I will not accept any promises. Only the day when he is really released will I leave this place.

Q: There are many associations all over the world which are working on your case. Are you in touch with any of thenm?
A: So far, I have no real relation with any of these organizations. I am not able to know who is fighting for him, or not. As far as I'm concerned, I believe that human beings out of compassion will contgact me andhelp a mother who has lost her son. From my side, I am illiterate and I don't know how this functions and which organizations is working is working to release my son. I have no idea, not even how I should contact these people. I am sure that people all over the world are willing to help me out of compassion, out of kindness, out of love; that is why I am here on the street appealing to people.

I believe there are organizations attempting to help, but as far as I can see there are no organizations anywhere in the wrold who can even tell me where my son is imprisoned, in which part of Tibet he is, or whether he is already dead. If an organization can at least pinpoint that much, then probably I would believe that there are organizations which are helping in this issue. Until then, I know that I am an individual who is trying to get my son released - that is all.

Q: How do you survive living in the streets in New Delhi? How do you get money?
A: In the past, for many years when my son was alive and working, in India or in the United States, I lived off him because my halth is ad. I always lived on his earnings. Now that I have come on he street....things are a little difficult, and so I have gone to the Tibetan welfare office in Majnu Ka Tilla in Old Delhi, and I have received aid from him twice in the last two years for atotal of 1,700 rupees a month (about $42.50 U.S.).

With this money I actually can last for quite a long time if it was just a question of getting something to eat. I can live on 500 rupees a month (about $12.50 U.S.). My expenditures are mainly for the paper for the petitions, which cost quite a lot of money. I also receive money from well wishers, and as a result I am alive. I have enough money to eat and pay for the paper for my petitions. The day I will not have enough money I will go again to the Tibetan welfare officer, but recently I have had no need to go back to him. Also, I have received some money from an Italian girl. She sent 1,500 rupees. Money will come. That finance is difficult is just normal. I don't consider that an additional burden whatsoever.

Q: If you stay here much longer you might die and then never see your son again. How can we convince you that your son wil be released one day and that you might have to practice a little more patience? This could save your life and your son could also enjoy being with you again one day.
A: If all these organizations you have been talking about will really help me to get my son released soon, then I think I will be able to wait, whether here or anywhere else. But if it is going to take interminably long then there is nothing really that I can do. And then I think that I will also think of some more severe desperate measures... When I lose faith completely that I don't think I will meet my son this life, then I will commit suicide. But as far as where I will do it, I will think about it and I will do it at the appropriate place.

Q: Is there something specific you would like to say to anyone who reads your story?
A: I appeal to the compassion of everyone all over the world to help a single mother to get her son released from the Chinese government. I am sure that you knwo better that me whom to appeal to, to your representatives, to your governments. These are things that myself, an uneducated, illiterate old Tibetan woman, has no idea of. And, I just pray that all of you, people who have been so helpful, might live forever.

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