Tibetan, jailed for directing film, flees China for Bay Area
A 43-year-old Tibetan filmmaker imprisoned by the Chinese government for making a short documentary about Tibetan opposition to the 2008 Beijing Olympics has managed to flee China and arrive in San Francisco, his supporters have announced.
Dhondup Wangchen, whose imprisonment sparked an international outcry, was “able to successfully evade the authorities and flee,” according to the group Filming for Tibet.
The group released a photograph of Wangchen smiling in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. The picture was taken Tuesday, shortly after his arrival in San Francisco on Christmas Eve.
“After many years, this is the first time I’m enjoying the feeling of safety and freedom. I would like to thank everyone who made it possible for me to hold my wife and children in my arms again. However, I also feel the pain of having left behind my country, Tibet,” the filmmaker said in a statement released by the group.
His 25-minute film, “Leaving Fear Behind,” is a montage of man-in-the-street interviews with ordinary Tibetans critical of the treatment of Tibet by the Chinese government and skeptical of the then-upcoming 2008 Olympics in
Beijing. The film, now widely available online, created a stir when it was shown secretly to journalists covering the Games.
Wangchen was arrested, convicted of subversion and sentenced to six years imprisonment. He was kept in solitary confinement for six months and contracted hepatitis before being released in 2014, after which he remained under government surveillance, his supporters say.
He left China without permission or documents and made his way via an unnamed Asian country to Switzerland, where he obtained a special U.S. visa to come to San Francisco, according to his friend Wangpo Tethong, a spokesman for Filming for Tibet. He has been reunited with his wife, Lhamo Tso, and his four children, who left Tibet in 2012 and live in Oakland.
“He was feeling a great deal of stress, but when he held his kids in his arms, the tension broke away,” Tethong said.
Tethong said his friend’s health is good but he has scheduled medical checkups in coming days.
After that, the filmmaker “has some motivation to start a new (film) project and is brainstorming for ideas.”
Calls and a fax to the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco seeking comment were not returned.