Company says Tibetan filmmaker released from Chinese prison after 6-year separatism sentence
BEIJING, China – A production company says Tibetan filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen has been released from a Chinese prison after serving a 6-year sentence for separatism.
Switzerland-based Filming for Tibet said Wangchen was freed Thursday in the western city of Xining. It said he was then driven by police to his sister’s home nearby.
Wangchen was arrested in March 2008 and sentenced to six years in prison in late 2009.
That followed his work on the 20-minute documentary “Leaving Fear Behind,” a collection of interviews with Tibetan nomads expressing their discontent over Chinese rule in Tibet, just ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Officers at the Qinghai Provincial Women’s Prison where Wangchen served out the last 17 months of his sentence hung up Friday on a researcher attempting to confirm Wangchen’s release.
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