By JOE McDONALD
BEIJING – A Tibetan nun who was China’s longest-serving female political prisoner traveled to the United States Friday, a U.S.-based activist said.
Ngawang Sangdrol flew to the United States accompanied by a U.S. diplomat, said John Kamm, president of the Dui Hua Foundation in San Francisco.
Imprisoned as a 15-year-old in 1992 for taking part in demonstrations against Chinese rule in Tibet, Ngawang Sangdrol was paroled in October, Kamm said. Her sentence was to have run through 2011.
Ngawang Sangdrol and 13 other imprisoned nuns became known as the “singing nuns” after they recorded songs about their love for their families and their homeland. Activists say their sentences were extended after the tape was smuggled out of Tibet’s Drapchi Prison.
Ngawang Sangdrol was a focus of lobbying by Washington. The U.S. ambassador to Beijing, Clark T. Randt, mentioned her in several speeches about “prisoners of conscience or victims of China’s legal system.”
Details of her departure were finalized during recent talks between Chinese officials and Lorne Craner, the U.S. State Department’s top human rights official, according to Kamm, who has been involved in the release of several prominent Chinese prisoners.
Ngawang Sangdrol reportedly arrived in Chicago Friday afternoon and was expected to continue on to Washington.
State Department spokesman Lou Fintor said Friday said Washington was pleased China allowed Ngawang Sangdrol to leave.
“The administration and Department of State, members of Congress, posts in China, have been actively involved on her behalf for years,” Fintor said.
Ngawang Sangdrol was allowed to leave China to seek treatment for severe headaches, which Chinese doctors were unable to cure, Kamm said.
Other activists say she was confined to bed much of the time with a heart condition and other problems aggravated by the hardships of prison life.
China has used medical parole as a way to rid itself of imprisoned dissidents. They usually are released on condition they go abroad, where communist authorities hope they will lose their political effectiveness. Pro-democracy leader Xu Wenli was paroled in December and flown to the United States.
China often times such releases to coincide with key political events. Ngawang Sangdrol was paroled shortly before then-President Jiang Zemin made his last visit to the United States in October as China’s leader.
