SFT's recent campaign victories are summarized below. They are the result of the efforts of thousands of dedicated people around the world. Thank you to everyone who organized, wrote letters, raised a ruckus, donated money, or otherwise helped bring about these victories.

Drapchi 14 Are Free!

On February 26, 2004, Phuntsog Nyidron, the last of the Drapchi 14 nuns still in prison, was freed. Her release came one year before the end of her 16-year prison term. Phuntsog Nyidron's release marks a major victory: the completion of the campaign to free the Drapchi 14, a group of 14 nuns who received sentence extensions while in prison for recording a tape of freedom songs and smuggling it out of prison. When SFT prioritized this campaign two years before Nyidron's release, one nun, Ngawang Lochoe, had died in prison in 2001 and eleven others were still imprisoned. Now all of those nuns are out, including Ngawang Sangdrol and Phuntsog Nyidron, who were serving the longest sentences ever handed down to female Tibetan prisoners. This is a milestone in the movement for Tibet, as it is the first time ever that an entire group of political prisoners has been freed.
[press release] [news article]

BP Divests from PetroChina, Gets Out of Tibet

In 2000, BP became the target of an intense international campaign by Tibetans and Tibet supporters after it invested $578 million in PetroChina, the company responsible for building a pipeline across Tibet to carry gas out of Tibet to industrial cities on China's east coast. BP's investment made it the largest foreign investor in PetroChina and provided the amount of capital needed to build the pipeline. Since 1999, the Chinese government has agressively sought foreign investment for its massive resource extraction and infrastructure projects in Tibet; projects that are aimed at consolidating China's political control. The BP divestment campaign has not been a major campaign for SFT in recent months, but we nonetheless welcome BP's decision to withdraw its support for PetroChina is a significant victory.
[press release]

Freedom Fighter Nun Ngawang Sangdrol Freed

Ngawang Sangdrol, one of the Drapchi 14 nuns, was first arrested at age 13 for a pro-independence demonstration. Arrested again at age 15, her sentence was extended repeatedly for continued protest in prison, which included recording a tape of freedom songs with the other Drapchi 14 nuns that was smuggled throughout Tibet. After intense pressure from people and governments around the world, she was released in October, 2002, 9 years before the end of her 21-year sentence. In April, 2003 she was released to the United States for medical treatment. She is now living in Washington, DC.
[press release] [more]

Music to Our Ears: Ngawang Choephel Released

Freeing Ngawang Choephel was one of SFT's first campaigns. For six years, students campaigned for a fellow student to be released from prison, and in January 2002, he finally was. Ngawang Choephel was studying ethnomusicology on a Fulbright scholarship at Middlebury College in Vermont when he decided to go to Tibet to document traditional Tibetan song and dance. He was arrested by the Chinese government in September 1995 and later charged with espionage and counter-revolutionary activities. In December 1996 Ngawang was sentenced to 18 years in prison. On January 20, 2002, Nwagang Choephel was released and flown to the United States, twelve years before the end of his sentence.
[press release] [message from Ngawang]

Under Pressure from SFT, PBR Pulls Down Billboard in Tibet

October 2001 - After intense pressure from SFT members, Pabst Blue Ribbon, the fourth largest brewing company in the United States, pulled down a billboard in Lhasa, Tibet that celebrated the "50th Anniversary of the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet." Pabst Brewing Company asked their Chinese licensee to remove the billboard after receiving over 1,500 faxes about the billboard over the course of less than a week.
[more]

Unprecedented: SFT & Tibet Movement Stop World Bank Project

In July 2000, a proposed World Bank loan that would have funded the move of 58,000 Chinese settlers into Tibet's Amdo Province collapsed, after fifteen months of intense campaigning by a broad international coalition of human rights organizations, Tibet support groups, environmental organizations and Bank-watching groups to stop the controversial project. The project would have facilitated China's continuing population transfer efforts, which have already made Tibetans a minority in much of their own nation and facilitates erosion of Tibetan's distinct culture and identity.
[press release] [press release - 1999] [more about the World Bank]

SFT & Rights Groups Sabotage State-owned PetroChina IPO

In 2000, SFT worked with labor, human rights, and environmental groups to successfully persuade many of America's largest investors to spurn the initial public offering (IPO) of PetroChina, one of the recently privatized subsidiaries of China's state-owned oil industry, and the company responsible for building a gas pipeline through Tibet. Citing human rights and environmental concerns, the coalition forced PetroChina to reduce its IPO target from $10 billion dollars down to a final figure of $2.8 billion, effectively taking more than $7 billion out of the hands of the Chinese government.
[press release] [news article]