Dhondup Wangchen, Chinese director and producer
Dhondup Wangchen (born 17 October 1974) is a Tibetan filmmaker imprisoned by the Chinese government in 2008 on charges related to his documentary Leaving Fear Behind. Made with senior Tibetan monk Jigme Gyatso, the documentary consists of interviews with ordinary Tibetan people discussing the 14th Dalai Lama, the Chinese government, the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and Han Chinese migrants to the region. After smuggling the tapes of the interviews out of Tibet, however, Dhondup Wangchen and Jigme Gyatso were detained during the 2008 Tibetan unrest.
Dhondup Wangchen was sentenced to six years' imprisonment for subversion. Numerous international human rights organizations protested his detention, including Amnesty International, which named him a prisoner of conscience. In 2012, he was awarded the International Press Freedom Award of the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
He served his full six-year sentence and was released from prison on 5 June 2014.In December 2017 Wangchen escaped from China to the United States, arriving in San Francisco on December 25, where his wife and children live, having been granted political asylum in the United States in 2012.