UNPO Secretary General Condemns Violence Against Hmong
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Showing posts with label Thai. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thai. Show all posts
Challenge of teaching border area students
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Use of mother tongue in early years is a success with Hmong kids in North, helps them learn Thai in later years
Have you ever considered how teachers and their students in remote areas interact while they are in class, especially those in mountainous areas where the mother-tongue is not Thai?
If you imagine a teacher talking before a blackboard and the students remaining silent, please forget it. You will no longer see such a typical style of teaching and learning - at least at Ban Rakpaendin School in Therng district in the northern province of Chiang Rai where 98 per
cent of more than 200 students are Hmong.
Clamorous voices of 19 kindergarten 2 students - scrambling to answer their teacher's questions and volunteering to read sentences written on the whiteboard in a Hmong dialect with Thai texts - could undoubtedly reflect the change in interaction in class between teachers and
students.
It was even more surprising that some students were brave enough to volunteer to read the sentences although they could not read them fluently, but had fun when they were trying to read.
Of course, doing nothing did not bring about this wonderful change to the Hmong students who face a tough barrier in the Thai language use in class with their Thai teachers.
Having been chosen to join the Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education project among 11 schools in different parts of the country, these schools where most of the students speak their own mother-tongues have adjusted their teaching.
Local teaching assistants, who speak Thai and the dialects spoken by the students, have been hired to help teachers conduct classes mainly in their dialects instead of in Thai, for Kindergarten 1 and 2 and Prathom 1 (Grade 1) students.
Hmong teacher Patcharaporn Saeyang, 20, speaks to them mainly in their dialect, but the students start to study Thai through its alphabet.
She has them use Thai characters to spell words in the dialect they speak. "Using Thai characters helps me link them to learn Thai language more easily."
Wirat Chatchawanpreecha, 48, the Thai teacher in this class, said: "They are confident answering questions, respond to Patcharaporn, and have the courage to volunteer to join activities in class because Hmong is used as the communication language. They are not forced to speak Thai but I would use gestures and sing in Thai to teach some easy Thai words."
Sakol Intawong, director of the school, said to use gestures with explanations in Hmong and in Thai when teaching them the Thai language was a "total physical response" technique.
"Before doing this project only 60 per cent of Prathom 3 students could read Thai, but now 70-80 per cent can do so, while kindergarten students' development has obviously improved. The use of Hmong in class is reduced gradually when they reach higher levels.
It is replaced by Thai language. We will use a hundred per cent Thai language in class when they reach Prathom 4," he added.
Starting this teaching adjustment for Kindergarten 1 students in 2009, the school has so far provided the same teaching to Kindergarten 2 and Prathom 1. It will extend the teaching to Prathom 2 from next academic year.
In this project, students from the border provinces speak different dialects. At four pilot schools in Chiang Rai they speak a Hmong dialect, at a school in Chiang Mai a Karen dialect, at Kanchanaburi a Mon dialect, at a school in Surin they speak a Khmer dialect and at four other
schools in Yala, Pattani, Narathiwat and Satun speak a local Malay dialect.
"This project could help us prepare children living near the border of the country for the ASEAN Economic Community," Office of Basic Education Commission Deputy Secretary General Benjalug Namfa said.
She cited research that children who had already known two languages would be able to learn the third language more easily. She believed that to learn English as their third language would not be very difficult for them. They were born in multi-cultures - their own, and Thai culture at schools, so they were prepared to live among two cultures, which would help them when they had to adjust themselves to the outside world.
Also, their dialects were similar to Thailand's neighbouring countries' languages so they would understand Thai language clearly and could communicate with citizens from those countries, said Bussaba Prapasapong, senior educator at Bureau of Academic Affairs and Educational
Standards, who oversees this project in the North.
To sustain this helpful project, Bussaba said he would propose Obec adjust regulations to appoint more local teaching assistants who could communicate in both Thai and local dialects. They were really in need. Also, she wanted Obec to allocate more budget to pay them more.
Around Bt4,000 per month was too little.The Foundation for Applied Linguistics has provided them knowledge and training on how to teach using the mother-tongue based multilingual techniques and financial support to hire many of the assistants.
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Robert Jambon: A Bold Life & Death For Laos and Hmong
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Wednesday, 14 December 2011, 1:20 pm
Press Release: Centre for Public Policy Analysis
December 13, 2011, Washington, D.C., Paris, France, Bangkok, Thailand and Vientiane, Laos
The Center for Public Policy Analysis, and a coalition of Lao and Hmong non-governmental organizations (NGOs), have issued a statement today honoring the life and legacy of retired French Colonel Robert Jambon and his valiant fight for human rights and freedom for the Laotian, Hmong and Vietnamese people. The NGOs also expressed their condolences to the Jambon family. According to his final statements as reported recently by an investigation concluded by French police, Colonel Jambon sacrificed himself in Dinan, France, as a veteran of the Indochina war, where he took his own life in seeking to bring international attention to the ongoing persecution and killing of the Lao Hmong people in Laos, Vietnam and Thailand.
“The Lao and Hmong veterans salute the supreme sacrifice of Colonel Robert Jambon in seeking to offer up his life to help bring international attention to the ongoing military attacks, and human rights violations in Laos and Vietnam, directed against freedom-loving people, including the Hmong,” said Colonel Wangyee Vang, National President of the Lao Veterans of America Institute (LVAI), the largest Laotian and Hmong non-profit veterans organization in the United States ,with chapters and members in France and internationally.
“Colonel Jambon wanted to help to save our Lao and Hmong people and the refugees, and ordinary people, who are being persecuted now in Laos by the military and communist regime,” Colonel Wangyee Vang stated.
“Colonel Jambon is a hero to our Laotian and Hmong people; He recently killed himself in France as an dramatic and important international statement of protest to try to help our people and to try to save those in the jungles and refugee camps in Laos and Thailand who have fled terrible religious and political persecution, genocide and bloody military attacks,” Wangyee Vang said.
“The Laotian and Hmong people will never forget Colonel Robert Jambon for his sacrifices in defense of the Royal Kingdom of Laos during the Indochina war and his efforts to bring awareness about the plight of Laotians and Hmong people who are the victims of human rights violations,” said Bounthanh Rathigna, President of the United League for Democracy in Laos, Inc. (ULDL).
“Colonel Robert Jambon’s life, and recent suicide in France, is an important and symbolic act of selfless love, and of calculated moral war, against systemic injustice and oppression that continues to be directed against thousands of innocent people in Laos, including the Hmong minority,” said Philip Smith, Executive Director of the Center for Public Policy Analysis (CPPA) in Washington, D.C.
“Robert Jambon’s final tragic act of love, and war, for the forgotten nation of Laos, and the persecuted Lao Hmong minority people there, has been heard in Washington, D.C. and has resonated with many in the Laotian community around the world,” Smith observed.
The CPPA continues to document human rights violations in Laos and Southeast Asia regard the Hmong and other peoples. Thousands of Hmong from Vietnam were arrested, or killed, earlier this year by the Vietnam Peoples' Army (VPA) in Dien Bien province after staging peaceful gatherings and protests. Hmong Christians in Laos have suffered increased persecution, atrocities and attacks by the Lao military and VPA forces. http://www.centerforpublicpolicyanalysis.org
“Despite the indifference of the international community, the war in Laos is, unfortunately, not over for the Lao Hmong people,” Smith continued. “The Lao People’s Army, and the secret police of the Stalinist regime in Laos, backed by military leaders in Hanoi, continue to kill and persecute the Laotian and Hmong people in the most brutal and egregious manner resulting in many refugees fleeing to neighboring Thailand and the ongoing deaths and casualties of thousands of innocent civilians as well as political and religious dissidents.”
“Colonel Jambon’s bold death, like the self-immolation of Tibetan and Vietnamese monks, is a fiery monument to heroism and self-sacrifice on behalf of the Hmong people of Laos and Vietnam whom he loved and knew, and served with in combat on behalf of France during the first Indochina war,” Smith commented.
“The violent forced repatriation of tens of thousands of Lao Hmong refugees from Ban Huay Nam Khao in Thailand, back to the communist regime in Laos, where they fled mass starvation and genocide in recent years, remains as a stain upon the international community as well as the hearts and minds of those concerned about human rights in Southeast Asia,” Smith stated.
“Colonel Robert Jambon rightly understood the horrific crimes, and incomprehensible abuses, that are still being violently inflicted upon thousands of innocent Hmong and Laotian civilians and religious and political dissident groups in Laos,” Smith continued.
“Colonel Jambon’s passionate and Gauguin-like suicide at the Indochina monument in Dinan, France, is a powerful symbol of devotion and understanding regarding the suffering plight of the Lao and Hmong people,” Smith concluded. “Robert Jambon’s courage in speaking truth to power to a world that has largely forgotten thousands of Lao Hmong people who have been abandoned by France and the United States in the mountains and jungles of Laos, and the refugee camps in Thailand, speaks volumes; The themes of love, war, betrayal, and the need to address the ongoing social injustice in Laos and Vietnam, resonate in the final gunshot that ended Robert Jambon’s amazing and important life”
Joining the CPPA, LVAI and ULDL in issuing a statement on behalf of Colonel Robert Jambon’s life and legacy include the United Lao for Human Rights and Democracy (ULHRD), Laos Institute for Democracy, Hmong Advance, Inc., Hmong Advancement, Inc., Lao Students for Democracy, Hmong Students Association and others.
Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders (MSF - Medecins Sans Frontieres), the CPPA and independent NGO and journalists have reported about the forced repatriation, persectution and human rights violations directed against the Lao Hmong people in Thailand and Laos.
http://www.msf.org/msf/articles/2007/07/hmong-refugees-in-thailand-are-a-population-in-danger.cfm
http://www.msf.org/msf/articles/2008/06/thailand-forcibly-returns-hundreds-of-hmong-refugees-to-laos.cfm
a26/003/2007/en
Source
Hmong 'killed' in forced return to Laos
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
An elderly Hmong man and his son were allegedly killed when the forced repatriation of several dozen hilltribe people to Laos last week turned violent, according to rights advocates in the US.
Yang Chao, 68, and his son Peng Chao, 21, were reportedly beaten by Lao officials because they tried to resist being put on boats to go back across the Mekong to Vientiane on September 28.
Witnesses rang Hmong advocates in the US to say that Yang Chao, who was handcuffed at the time, was knocked senseless, then allegedly dumped from one boat when it was halfway across the river.
They claim his son Peng Chao was also beaten unconscious in Nong Khai while arguing against being forcibly returned. His body was also allegedly thrown into the river, advocates said.
Source
Thailand again sullies its human rights record
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Deja vu is a French term meaning "already seen". Refoulement is also French, meaning "to force back". Upon receiving a report on Christmas Day that Thai authorities had just forced back 166 refugees to Burma, I knew that I had seen this before - at Christmas 2009 in fact.
An armed Thai soldier stands guard as Burmese refugees wait for food at a border police base in Mae Sot on Nov 9 last year. Before the year ended many of the refugees were forcibly sent back to Burma.
Indeed, only a year ago this weekend, a colleague and I had written an article in this newspaper decrying the Thai government's 2009 record on refugee protection. In late December 2009 - likewise seemingly calculated to coincide with the slowest week of the year - the army forcibly returned to Laos around 4,500 ethnic minority Hmong, among whom were 158 recognised refugees and many other asylum seekers.
A year later, only the facts had changed: the 166 refugees forcibly returned on Dec 25 had fled fighting in eastern Burma between the Burmese army and several ethnic minority armed groups. Of these refugees, 120 were women and children. They had taken refuge in Waw Lay village in Phop Phra district of Tak province, where authorities had likewise forced back at least 360 Burmese refugees on Dec 8, roughly 650 on Nov 17, and approximately 2,500 on Nov 10, 2010.
Along with the year-end symmetry, however, the human rights violations are the same. Everyone has the right to seek asylum, and those recognised as refugees have a right to not be sent back to fighting or persecution - the principle of non-refoulement.
The Thai government denied this right to the 166 people from Burma, all considered refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The fact that Thailand has not ratified the UN Refugee Convention makes no difference: like the prohibition against torture, non-refoulement is customary international law, meaning that it applies to all states regardless of their treaty obligations. Once again, Thailand has committed a clear and direct violation of international refugee law.
Despite the ugly precedent set a year earlier, this action still came as a shock, given that on Oct 7 the Thai Foreign Ministry had publicly denied any "plans to repatriate to Burma displaced persons after the [Burmese] elections". It was election day itself, Nov 7, when the first of roughly 20,000 refugees from Burma began to arrive in Thailand. And on Dec 6 - though after several incidents of refoulement had already occurred - Tak Governor Samart Loifa was quoted in this newspaper as stating that Thailand would not send refugees back as long as the fighting continued. This, sadly, was often not the case, for while most refugees have returned to Burma, many - like the 166 on Christmas - did so involuntarily. And the fighting has continued throughout.
My colleague and I concluded in our article a year ago that "Thailand's disregard for its international legal obligations should not go without a response by the international community", and I can only restate that now. UNHCR, which issued a statement in late December calling on Thailand to not forcibly return the 166, should condemn the action and reiterate its call vis-a-vis all refugees who remain in Thailand or may yet arrive. Embassies in Bangkok should do likewise, while countries on the UN Human Rights Council (which includes Thailand as a member and Thailand's ambassador to Geneva as its president) should also raise concerns about this violation.
Indeed, it is now too late for the 166 Burmese refugees who have been forcibly returned, just as it was in 2009 for the 158 Lao Hmong refugees. But given ongoing conflict in Burma, refugees from there will continue to cross the border during 2011. Thailand, regardless of which party is in power, must acknowledge and uphold its international legal obligations. Once is already once too often for human rights deja vu.
Benjamin Zawacki is Amnesty International's researcher on Thailand and Burma.
Source
Lao refugee (HMONG) denied exit visa to Australia
Monday, August 23, 2010
So near, yet so far. Photo: Ben Doherty
An asylum seeker granted refugee status by Australia is being kept in limbo by both Laos and Thailand.
TOUA Vang Cheng (not his real name) has spent a lifetime fleeing persecution.
A Hmong tribesman from Laos, he lives every day like those before it, trapped in no-man’s land. He had believed his decades of uncertainty – of being arrested, jailed, and tortured, of paying smugglers to spirit him across borders – were over when he was granted a humanitarian visa to resettle in Australia in 2007. But since then he has languished in refugee camps, unable to move to Australia because neither Thailand nor Laos will grant him an exit visa.
Last December, to international outrage, Mr Cheng and another 150-odd UN-recognised refugees, as well as 4500 asylum seekers, were forcibly deported from Thailand by the Thai army, back into detention camps in Laos.
Australia was furious, saying it was working to resettle 47 of the deported group, and that Mr Cheng and 16 others had already been granted humanitarian visas to live in Australia.
But now, after months in a detention centre in a remote, mountainous, part of Laos, Mr Cheng has again escaped and is back in hiding, in an undisclosed location in central Thailand.
He has, in his words, “no future”. He cannot work in Thailand, and is fearful of leaving the tiny single-room apartment he shares with half a dozen others in daylight, for fear of being caught.
“There is no way out for me,” he told The Age, on condition his identity not be revealed. “Every day it is the same, I am afraid. If they catch me, they send me back. I cannot live in Laos. They will kill me.
“I am a human, too. I would like to live. I would be a good citizen.”
It is understood about 14 Hmong families, comprising more than 70 people, have fled Lao detention camps in recent months, most back into Thailand.
Several families hold visas to move to Australia, while others have permits to resettle in the US, Canada and the Netherlands.
The Hmong, historically a hill tribe from southern China, are an ethnic minority in Laos. They have been persecuted by the communist government there for decades, and Mr Cheng’s story mirrors that of thousands of Hmong.
His began during the Vietnam War, when his father, along with thousands of Hmong men, were trained as a secret army by the CIA, to fight alongside American troops against communist North Vietnam.
But after the war, when the communist Pathet Lao party came to power in Laos, Hmong were systematically driven from their land, had homes burned, and were attacked, raped and killed.
Mr Cheng is in his late 40s, or early 50s – he isn’t certain. He has spent almost all of his life on the run. He fled to China, but was captured, beaten and jailed, including being shackled in leg-irons for two years. He escaped and fled into Thailand.
In 2003, he gained access to the UN’s refugee agency for the first time, and was assessed as having a genuine fear of persecution and a legitimate claim to asylum.
In 2007, in a refugee camp in Nong Khai on Thailand’s border with Laos, he was interviewed by Australian immigration officials and offered resettlement as a refugee.
“I thought all my problems were solved. Finally I can be freely somewhere. I felt like I had a future. I felt I would be safe.
But Thailand refused to give him the exit permit to leave for Australia.
Plane tickets were booked, and abandoned, as pressure from Laos – anxious not to be seen internationally as a country riven with ethnic tensions – meant Thailand wouldn’t let him leave.
Then, in December last year, he was part of the group of asylum seekers deported in army trucks by soldiers.
The Thai army forcibly evicted the Hmong in secret, sealing off a 12-square-kilometre area around the camp, and scrambling mobile phone signals to the area.
Their actions drew international condemnation, including from Australia, which described the action as a breach of international obligations not to send refugees back to where they faced harm.
The Thai and Lao governments declined to comment. But Thai government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn has said previously that Thailand regards all Hmong asylum seekers as illegal immigrants and that, if found, they would be sent back to Laos, regardless of UN or third country documentation.
Source
Bill would give burial rights to Hmong veterans
Thursday, July 29, 2010
FRESNO, Calif.—Members of the country's Hmong community who fought with U.S. forces during the Vietnam War would be eligible for burial in national cemeteries under a bill introduced by a Fresno congressman.
Hmong groups say legislation like the bill Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, introduced Tuesday is long overdue and would give them the recognition they deserve.
"It means a great deal to the community," said Bao Vang, president and chief executive of the Hmong American Partnership, a Minnesota-based community development organization. "Hmong lost many lives due to the war."
The Hmong are an ethnic minority from the mountains of Laos. Thousands of Hmong soldiers fought under CIA advisers—an effort that was not acknowledged publicly by American officials for years—during the war to back a pro-American Lao government. A communist victory in 1975 forced them to flee, with many going to Thailand and the United States.
Census figures show more than 65,000 Hmong live in California, including 48,000 in Fresno. Other large Hmong communities are in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
"Our Hmong veterans fought shoulder to shoulder with American soldiers during the Vietnam War," Costa said in a statement. "Our nation owes a debt of gratitude to these patriotic individuals, and their service should be honored with burial benefits in our national cemeteries."
About 6,900 Hmong around the country would be eligible for the burial privileges if the bill passed, according to Costa. The Department of Veterans Affairs would have to verify their service.
Costa said he was able to finally introduce the bill after garnering the support of 22 other members of Congress, who co-sponsored it.
Will Crain, a spokesman for Costa, acknowledged that time was quickly running out to pass the bill in the current session.
"Looking at the legislative calendar, there's not a huge timeframe under which to move this," he said. "But we're going to continue to build support for it."
Source
Hmong Refugees Live in Fear in Laos and Thailand
Ethnic Hmong refugees stand inside a truck in Phetchabun province, Thailand, during an operation to deport thousands of asylum seekers to Laos, on Dec. 28, 2009
Improved relations with the U.S. would surely benefit most citizens of Laos — though not everyone is so upbeat about the possibility. Meeting TIME at a secret location in Thailand, a Laotian Hmong refugee who recently escaped a repatriation camp in Laos says the Washington exchange will do nothing to help thousands of Hmong still being persecuted in Laos. "They are only talking about imports and exports, not how to help Hmong people who once supported America," says Pao Chang (an alias used for security).
During the Vietnam War, the CIA enlisted more than 60,000 Hmong from the Royal Lao Army to form a secret army to disrupt Communist supply lines and rescue American pilots. Fierce mercenaries, the Hmong acted as an effective counter to North Vietnam's growing support base in Laos. When the Communists won and the CIA left, a handful of senior Hmong were flown out, but the majority remaining faced Communist retribution for siding with America. The Pathet Lao publicly announced they would wipe out the Hmong, and attacks intensified. Some Hmong groups fled deep into the jungle — where more than 3,000 continue to live to this day — while the rest sought asylum in Thailand, where they remained until recently. (See a brief history of the Hmong and the CIA.)
On Dec. 28, 2009, Pao Chang and more than 4,000 other Hmong asylum seekers in Thailand were rounded up by local Thai authorities and forcibly sent back to Laos. "We based these actions on our immigration law, which considers them to be illegal migrants, so they were dealt with accordingly," Panitan Wattanayagorn, spokesman for the Thai Prime Minister, told TIME. Only six years earlier, Thai authorities had helped resettle 14,000 Hmong refugees in the U.S. The Thai about-face on its Hmong population sparked an international furor, with countries including the U.S. and Australia condemning Thailand for refusing to protect the minority group. Although Thailand never signed the United Nations Convention on Refugees, the U.N. was outraged that the government had sent back unwilling refugees. "To proceed would not only endanger the protection of the refugees but set a very grave international example," said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), António Guterres, at the time.
Even more troubling for the United Nations were the 158 Hmong refugees being held in the Nong Kai immigration detention center, who had been granted refugee status and invited to resettle by the U.S., the Netherlands, Australia and Canada. "We were ready to leave," says Pao Chang, showing his family's acceptance letter from a third country along with tickets for a flight out. "Then Thai authorities came to us on the day and just said, 'No, you can't go. We have an agreement with Laos that no Hmong are to leave Thailand.' " Asked for comment, Wattanayagorn said the move came only after "Laos had assured Thailand the returning Hmong would not face persecution."
Thailand's involvement in the U.S.'s "secret war" in Cambodia and Laos is often overlooked. Allied with the U.S. against the Communists in Laos and Vietnam, the Thai military trained many of the senior Hmong leaders. Times have clearly changed. Thailand is now Laos's No. 1 foreign investor, and according to Joe Davy, a Hmong advocate, deporting the Hmong is just another example of political fence mending following years of border conflict. "The main reason Thailand sent them back was pressure from Laos, which has always accused Thailand of harboring elements of the Hmong resistance," Davy says.
After a series of multilateral meetings in December 2009, the Laotian government agreed that the 158 registered refugees could resettle elsewhere on the condition that they spend 30 days in Laos. "They told us if we were still not happy in Laos, we could leave, but it was just a trick," says Pao Chang. A few days later, says Pao Chang, Thai soldiers forced him onto a bus and took him to Laos, where authorities ordered him not to tell foreigners he wanted to leave. He says he was then sent to a repatriation camp, where armed guards — many of whom had fought against the ragtag groups of Hmong fighters who remain in the jungle — kept his family under 24-hour surveillance. Pao Chang says he was given a "flimsy house and a tiny plot of bad farmland." Says Pao Chang with tears in his eyes: "The conditions were unbearable. There were no schools and only two nurses for thousands of people." (Read "A Blackbird's Song.")
To ease the international community's concerns, Laotian authorities organized two official visits for foreign diplomats. During one visit, Pao Chang says, a senior commander gave him a script ordering him to tell diplomats he was being looked after and had no desire to move. Those who refused to abide by the script were denied day passes to leave the camps. After unknown assailants burned down camp farmland, Pao Chang decided he had to escape. "If I stayed, they eventually would have found a way to kill me," he says.
Pao Chang escaped the camp, traveling through Laos at night without identification, and illegally crossed the Mekong River. Chang says, "If the authorities would have caught me, I would have been executed." The future of Pao Chang and other families in Thailand who have followed remains unclear. He has papers from the UNHCR certifying his refugee status, but he has little faith he will be protected. "Last time I showed this paper to Thailand, they hit me on the head," Pao Chang says.
Wattanayagorn says that if caught, returning Hmong asylum seekers would be treated as illegal immigrants and sent back to Laos regardless of U.N. documents. According to Kraisak Choonhavan, MP of the Democrat Party, Thailand has never signed an international refugee treaty, so it is not bound by UNHCR rules. But even Choonhavan didn't know why Thailand wasn't letting the Hmong families invited by third countries leave. "There is something strange going on here," he says.
Read more...
Hmong Refugees Live in Fear in Laos and Thailand
Recently U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Laos Foreign Minister Thongloun Sisoulith met in Washington for the highest-level talks between the two countries since the end of the Vietnam War. For the U.S., the meeting was part of a strategy to re-engage with Asia, while Laos hoped the D.C. visit would boost trade. After years of frosty relations following America's carpet-bombing of Laos in the 1960s and '70s, the meeting was overall a symbolic break from the past.
Improved relations with the U.S. would surely benefit most citizens of Laos - though not everyone is so upbeat about the possibility. Meeting TIME at a secret location in Thailand, a Laotian Hmong refugee who recently escaped a repatriation camp in Laos says the Washington exchange will do nothing to help thousands of Hmong still being persecuted in Laos. "They are only talking about imports and exports, not how to help Hmong people who once supported America," said Pao Chang using an alias for security.
During the Vietnam War, the CIA enlisted more than 60,000 Hmong from the Royal Lao Army to form a secret army to disrupt Communist supply lines and rescue American pilots. Fierce mercenaries, the Hmong acted as an effective counter to North Vietnam's growing support base in Laos. When the Communists won and the CIA left, a handful of senior Hmong were flown out, but the majority that remained faced Communist retribution for siding with America. The Pathet Lao publicly announced they would wipe out the Hmong and attacks intensified. Some Hmong groups fled deep into the jungle - where more than 3,000 continue to live to this day - the rest fled to Thailand seeking asylum, where they remained until recently. (See a brief history of the Hmong and the CIA)
On Dec. 28, 2009, Pao Chang and more than 4,000 other Hmong asylum seekers in Thailand were rounded up by local Thai authorities and forcibly sent back to Laos. "We based these actions on our immigration law, which considers them to be illegal migrants, so they were dealt with accordingly," Panitan Wattanayagorn, spokesman for the Thai prime minister, told TIME. Only six years earlier, Thai authorities had helped resettle 14,000 Hmong refugees in the U.S. The Thai about-face on its Hmong population sparked an international furor, with countries including America and Australia condemning Thailand for refusing to protect the minority group. Although Thailand never signed the United Nations Convention on Refugees, the U.N. was outraged the government had involuntarily sent back refugees. "To proceed would not only endanger the protection of the refugees, but set a very grave international example," said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, AntÓnio Guterres, at the time.
Even more troubling for the United Nations were the 158 Hmong refugees being held in the Nong Kai immigration detention center, who had been granted refugee status and invited to resettle by America, Netherlands, Australia and Canada. "We were ready to leave," said Pao Chang, showing his family's acceptance letter from a third country along with tickets for a flight out. "Then Thai authorities came to us on the day and just said, 'No, you can't go. We have an agreement with Laos that no Hmong are to leave Thailand.'" Asked for comment, Wattanayagorn said the move came only after "Laos had assured Thailand the returning Hmong would not face persecution."
Thailand's involvement in the U.S.'s "Secret War" in Cambodia and Laos is often overlooked. Allied with the U.S. against the Communists in Laos and Vietnam, the Thai military trained many of the senior Hmong leaders. Times have clearly changed. Thailand is now Laos's number one foreign investor, and according to Joe Davy, a Hmong advocate, deporting the Hmong is just another example of political fence-mending following years of border conflict. "The main reason Thailand sent them back was pressure from Laos, which has always accused Thailand of harboring elements of the Hmong resistance," Davy says.
After a series of multilateral meetings in December 2009, the Laotian government agreed that the 158 registered refugees could resettle elsewhere on the condition they spent 30 days in Laos. "They told us if we were still not happy in Laos, we could leave, but it was just a trick," says Pao Chang. A few days later, says Pao Chang, Thai soldiers forced him onto a bus and took him to Laos where authorities ordered him not to tell foreigners he wanted to leave. He says he was then sent to a repatriation camp, where armed guards - many of whom had fought against the rag-tag groups of Hmong fighters who remain in the jungle - had his family under 24-hour surveillance. Pao Chang says he was given a "flimsy house and a tiny plot of bad farmland." Says Pao Chang with tears in eyes: "The conditions were unbearable; there were no schools and only two nurses for thousands of people."(Read "A Blackbird's Song.")
In order to ease the international community's concerns, the Laotian authorities organized two official visits for foreign diplomats. During one visit, Pao Chang says a senior commander gave him a script ordering him to tell diplomats he was being looked after and had no desire to move. Those who refused to abide by the script were denied day passes to leave the camps. After unknown assailants burned down camp farmland, Pao Chang decided he had to escape. "If I stayed, they eventually would have found a way to kill me," he says.
Pao Chang escaped the camp, traveling through Laos at night without identification and illegally crossed the Mekong River. Chang says, "If the authorities would have caught me, I would have been executed." Now in Thailand, the future of Pao Chang and other families who have followed remains unclear. He has papers from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) certifying his refugee status, but he has little faith they will protect them. "Last time I showed this paper to Thailand they hit me on the head," Pao Chang says.
Wattanayagorn says if they are caught, returning Hmong asylum seekers would be treated as illegal migrants and sent back to Laos - regardless of U.N. documents. According to Kraisak Choonhavan, MP of the Democrat Party, Thailand has never signed an international refugee treaty so it is not bound by UNHCR rules, but even Choonhavan didn't know why Thailand wasn't letting the Hmong families invited by third countries leave. "There is something strange going on here," he says.
Source
Old wars never die
Thursday, July 15, 2010
The unhappy fate of the Hmong
FOREIGN dignitaries in black limos are a common sight in Washington, DC. Rarely though do they hail from Laos, a tiny, landlocked country that was caught up in America’s ill-fated Indochina War. Laos’s foreign minister, Thongloun Sisoulith, who met his counterpart, Hillary Clinton, on July 13th, is the most senior Lao official to visit since 1975, when Communist forces seized power. The two countries restored full diplomatic ties in 1992, but the war still casts a shadow. Unexploded ordnance, dropped by the Americans, remains scattered over the Lao countryside.
Another niggling concern is the fate of 4,689 ethnic Hmong who were forcibly sent back to Laos by Thailand in December. During the war the CIA recruited the Hmong as anti-Communist fighters. Many fled the country after 1975, ending up as refugees in America, Thailand and elsewhere. In 2004-05 America accepted 14,000 Hmong who had been living at a Thai temple. The latest group, which had been stuck in Thai army camps, was less fortunate. Thai officials, calling them economic migrants, blocked most from applying for sanctuary via the United Nations’ refugee agency, UNHCR. And although 158 of them did get somehow get UN refugee status, pending resettlement by America and others, they were deported anyway.
Foreign governments pressed Laos for access to the returned refugees, who were packed off to resettlement villages. In March visitors were flown by helicopter to one village for a carefully staged visit. Handpicked Hmong told diplomats that they preferred to stay in Laos and had been “misled” into seeking refugee status. But when others went off script, pleading for help in getting to the West, the visitors were bundled away. Some of these Hmong have since fled from the village, presumably for the border. In response, a curfew has been imposed, a human-rights monitor reports from Bangkok, the Thai capital.
Laos denies that the Hmong, one of dozens of minority groups, face any ill treatment. But they have reason to be worried. Hmong traditionally farm upland areas where the CIA set up clandestine operating bases during the war and, incredibly, 35 years later, tiny pockets of Hmong fighters are still battling the Lao army. It is unclear how many, if any, of the latest deportees are related to these ragtag rebels. But with such uncertainty, international law forbids the forced return of people to a country where they fear persecution.
Sadly, it is not the first time that Thailand has flouted such rules. It has turned away Myanmar’s minorities, including Muslim Rohingya boat people who in 2009 were pushed back to sea, where hundreds probably drowned. Army officers claimed that the Rohingya were a security threat and had links to a Muslim-led insurgency in the south. They gave no evidence and, despite a promise by the Thai prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, there has been no inquiry.
Thailand’s expulsion of the Hmong drew sharp criticism from American, UN and European Union officials. But it has done wonders for relations between Thailand and Laos. The Obama administration tries to claim that America’s influence in the region is not waning. Mrs Clinton is expected at a summit of the Association of South-East Asian Nations next week in Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital. But shoddy treatment of minorities by Thailand, long an American ally, bodes ill for others hoping for help from the superpower. Nor is it an encouraging sign for Thailand itself. “There was a time when they wouldn’t do this, when the rule of law meant something,” sighs a Western diplomat in Bangkok.
Source
Visiting the repatriated Hmong
Monday, April 19, 2010
Foreign press access to Laos is notoriously rare, so when the government invited AFP I was itching to go.
But as our rickety Russian-made helicopter touched down in a remote corner of the People's Democratic Republic, the diplomats and journalists on board knew this was no ordinary press trip.
We were there for a "tour" of a village housing thousands of ethnic Hmong people who were recently kicked out of Thailand, despite fears they would face persecution on their return for fighting in a CIA-backed "secret army" when the Vietnam War spread to Laos.
When Thailand forcibly repatriated around 4,500 Hmong asylum-seekers in December, insisting they were illegal economic immigrants, the move infuriated the international community. The UN had recognised 158 as refugees, and was never allowed to assess if the rest needed protection.
Laos denied that outside access to the group would be difficult, but three months later the few visits permitted to foreign observers had been carefully stage-managed and far from the "free and unfettered access" that rights groups and embassies demanded.
So it was with much scepticism that I accepted the invitation, aware the Laotian regime would do all it could to show that the group were well-treated and glad to be back.
Diplomats I asked thought it was at least a step in the right direction, but activists seemed less convinced.
"It'll be a dog and pony show," a rights worker in Bangkok warned me.
We had just two hours on the ground, most of which was spent in a village hall, where officials told us of grand plans to develop the apparently-contented community.
But a few brave Hmong spotted a rare chance to tell us otherwise.
"I want to go to another country," said one woman (via a diplomat who thankfully could translate) while others tearfully tried to explain their plight as we were ushered away.
Sensing they were losing control, our chaperones lost their cool.
"Everybody get out!" yelled the previously calm and collected foreign ministry spokesman, after pulling me away from the crowd.
So we left without a tour of the village, but a chance to remind outsiders that so long as decent access to these Hmong is still forbidden, they should not be forgotten.
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Laos Extracts Forced Confessions To Help Silence Hmong Refugees
Friday, February 26, 2010
“The Hmong refugees in Ponkham village, Pha Lak village and elsewhere in Laos are unable to freely and openly communicate to visiting U.S. and Thai officials and journalists today about the true horrific human rights violations inflicted upon them by the Thai and Lao military for fear of severe retaliation when these foreign visitors leave,” said Vaugh Vang, Director of the Lao Hmong Human Rights Council.
Washington, D.C., Vientiane, Laos and Bangkok, Thailand, February 26, 2010
On the day that the Lao government is finally allowing limited access to some 3,000 Hmong refugees forced back to Laos, concern has been raised by Lao and Hmong human rights organizations and the Center for Public Policy Analysis (CPPA) that hundreds of Lao Hmong refugees and asylum seekers recently forced by the Thai Army back to Laos have been coerced into signing false “confessions” by authorities in Laos. Lao military and government officials have threatened to severely punish or summarily execute Hmong refugees and their families if they speak out against the Lao regime or their forced repatriation to Laos. Hmong refugees fear retaliation if they speak the truth about their recent plight in Thailand and Laos.
The Lao government is finally allowing U.S. and Thai officials, along with some news media reporters, to visit an estimated 3,000 Hmong refugees in Ponkham village, in Bolikhamxay Province, who were forced back to Laos on December 28 of last year by the Thai and Lao military. Over 4,700 Lao Hmong refugees were forced back to the communist regime in Laos they fled in December of last year. A total of 8,000 Lao Hmong refugees and asylum seekers were forced back to Laos by Thai and Lao military officials from 2007-2009.
“Many of the Hmong men were beaten, subjected to food and sleep deprivation, in order to get them to sign the fake confessions that the Communist officials seek in order to intimidate and silence the Hmong refugees in Laos and spread fear in terror among their families,” Vang said. “They Lao officials, for propaganda reasons, want the Hmong to remain silent or say only good things about the Lao government and their treatment.”
“Laotian and Hmong sources in Ponkham and Pha Lak village, as well as elsewhere in Laos, have confirmed that hundreds of Hmong refugees forced by the Thai Army back to Laos have been threatened and coerced into signing false ‘confessions’ by Lao military and security forces who have interrogated, threatened and tortured significant numbers of the refugees, including many of the Hmong elders, veterans and clan leaders,” stated Philip Smith Executive Director of the CPPA in Washington, D.C.
Smith explained: “Unless the refugees remain silent and compliant, the false confessions extracted under torture and duress, including sleep deprivation and beatings, allow the Lao government to retaliate against individual refugees with the death penalty, as well as their immediate and extended family in Laos, for agreeing that they have conducted alleged subversive capital crimes against the state and communist party.”
“The Lao military, consistent with its historical operation of re-education camps in Sam Neua Province and elsewhere in Laos, is now forcibly extracting hundreds of forced signed confessions from Hmong refugees during reeducation and indoctrination sessions; so the visit of U.S. and Thai officials today at the camp, along with a delegation of journalists, is unlikely to reveal the truth of what is really going on in Laos because the refugees fear retaliation against themselves and their families when the foreign visitors leave,” Smith concluded.
In recent years, Laos has repeatedly stated that Hmong refugees return to Laos would be subjected to re-education camps in Laos. Over half of the 8,000 Hmong refugees recently returned to Laos from 2007-2009 are missing in Laos, including many from the June 2008 mass forced repatriation following a protest march of thousands of the refugees from Ban Huay Nam Khao seeking to petition the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) headquarters in Bangkok for political asylum. Many of the Hmong refugees forced back to Laos by the Thai Army have be imprisoned in secret camps and prisons in remote and scattered areas in Laos, others have disappeared or have been imprisoned or summarily executed, including many of the leaders of the June 2008 protest march. www.smh.com.au/world/deported-hmong-held-by-lao-army-in-squalid- ..
www.media-newswire.com/release_1068048.html
www.media-newswire.com/release_1068367.html
Laotians and Hmong suspected of opposing the government in Laos have been subjected to starvation and military attacks in recent years by the Lao Peoples Army and Hanoi supported Vientiane government. newsblaze.com/story/20080208201534nnnn.nb/topstory.html
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Contact: Maria Gomez or Juan Lopez
info@centerforpublicpolicyanalysis.org
Tele. (202) 543-1444
CPPA - Center for Public Policy Analysis
2020 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Suite No. # 212
Washington, D.C. 20006 USA
www.cppa-dc.org
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Thai, US officials to visit returned Hmong Friday: Laos
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
HANOI, Feb 24 (AFP) - Thai and US officials will get access on Friday to a newly built village in Laos where thousands of ethnic Hmong have been housed after their expulsion from Thailand in December.
Rights groups and foreign embassies have been seeking access to the returnees to ensure they are being properly treated.
The visit is a way "to show our sincerity in good treatment" of the Hmong, Laos government spokesman Khenthong Nuanthasing told AFP on Wednesday.
Bangkok sparked outrage in December when it defied global criticism and used troops to repatriate about 4,500 Hmong from camps on the border with communist Laos, including 158 recognised as refugees by the United Nations.
Thailand and Laos both said the Hmong, who fear persecution for fighting alongside US forces in the Vietnam War, were illegal economic immigrants.
Khenthong said officials from the United States embassy will join the Thai military, foreign affairs officials and reporters on the visit to Ponkham village.
The spokesman said that "the Thai government has rendered good cooperation to the Laos government so we should allow them to inspect the site first".
In Bangkok, Thai foreign ministry deputy spokesman Thani Thongpakdi said: "A group of army officials and representatives from the foreign ministry, together with the press, will go to Vientiane and Ponkham on 25-26 February to follow up the sending back."
According to the Vientiane Times, Ponkham village is being built in Bolikhamxay province to house about 3,000 returned Hmong.
Human rights groups have expressed concern for the safety of the returnees but diplomats say there have been no reports of mistreatment. US congressmen earlier visited some of the repatriated group.
Source
Hmong: Refugees Said to have Little Food, Supplies in Remote Camp in Laos
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Below is an article published by: The Post-Crescent
Vaughn Vang of the Lao Hmong Human Rights Council in Green Bay said Thursday a source told him the refugees were placed in a remote resettlement area, where they were left with few supplies and food. Many need medical attention, Vang said.
Refugees were left with a few blankets, utensils and pots and pans, he said. Those who had cell phones are not able to use them in the remote area, he said."They are suffering," he said. "They are waiting on the world and the (United Nations) to help them."
Faida Thao, former president of the Appleton-based Hmong-American Partnership said Sunday he doesn't know of any Fox Cities families whose relatives have been forcibly resettled."But Hmong here and throughout the U.S. have deep concern for those who have been deported to Laos," he said. "Everyone understands that the communists who took over our country say one thing and do another."Thao is particularly concerned about male leaders and elders.
"For now they may not do anything to them, but they may try to do something to them in the future so they die."
Lao Foreign Ministry spokesman Khenthong Nuanthasing said returnees had been moved from temporary holding camps to resettlement villages the first half of January.Vang estimated about 1,000 of the nearly 5,000 people removed from Thailand were allowed into other areas of the country. Other families, including some from the jungle area of Laos, were placed in the resettlement villages, he said. Some families can't be accounted for.
The resettlement area is heavily guarded and no one is allowed to enter, Vang said. His source had not heard that people were tortured, but said people were told they could be "persecuted or killed" if they disclosed information about the resettlement area, he said.
Many Hmong fought during the Vietnam War to back a pro-American Lao government. Since the war, more than 300,000 Lao, mostly Hmong, fled to Thailand and for years were housed in camps aided by international agencies. Most were either repatriated to Laos or resettled in third countries, particularly the United States.Nineteen humanitarian and human rights groups, fearing the Hmong could be in danger, recently issued a letter to Lao leaders asking for access to the site.
Lao government officials said the U.N. could visit, but that they might want to wait until April, when a better road to the villages would be complete. But Vang said the area could be reached by helicopter.
"People are hungry, they're sick, they need help," he said.
Source
Hmong: Thai agency blocked from refugee access
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Below is an article published by CathNews Asia :
Thailand’s Catholic Office for Emergency and Refugees which looked after some 4,000 ethnic Hmong asylum-seekers before they were deported to Laos, says that it still has no access to the people or knowledge of their situation.
Catholic Office for Emergency Relief and Refugees (COERR) pledged to continue working with the Hmong after their repatriation but it has been prevented from doing so by the Laotian government even after more than a month, UCA News reports.
“We can’t do anything. We have to wait for the outcome of negotiations between Laos and UNICEF or UNHCR,” said Bishop Joseph Phibul Visitnonthachai of Nakhon Sawan, executive director of COERR.
The Thai government on Dec. 28 repatriated the Hmong from Huay Nam Khao refugee camp in Phetchabun province, northern Thailand, despite protests from various international bodies and governments.
It claimed everyone in the camp as “illegal immigrants.”
COERR was the only private organization working with the displaced Hmong before their repatriation, coordinating with UNICEF.
“The Laotian government will not negotiate with us,” Bishop Phibul told UCA News today, explaining that it only negotiates with other governments or with the United Nations on these issues.
“If UNICEF or UNHCR gets permission to work on this issue, then we can ask UNICEF to continue working with them. However we don’t know when will that be.”
Thailand has repatriated 17 groups of Hmong to Laos since 2005.
Many Laotian Hmong who had fought for the US during the Vietnam War fled in 1975 when the communist Pathet Lao took over the country. Thousands have been resettled in the United States.
Source
Laos, Vietnam Peoples Army Unleashes Helicopter Gunship Attacks on Laotian and Hmong Civilians, Christian Believers
Thursday, February 11, 2010
"Helicopter gunship attacks have intensified against Lao Hmong villagers and civilians in Laos, including enclaves of Hmong Protestant Christian, Catholic and Animist believers who have fled to the jungle and mountains...," said Philip Smith of the CPPA in Washington, D.C.
(Media-Newswire.com) - Washington, D.C., and Bangkok, Thailand, February 10, 2010 - The Lao Peoples Army ( LPA ), backed by troops and advisers from the Vietnam Peoples Army ( VPA ), has launched heavy military attacks to seek to eliminate remaining Laotian and Hmong civilian and dissident groups in hiding in Phou Bia and Phou Da Phao mountain areas, and elsewhere in Laos. Many of those targeted include independent Christian and Animist enclaves of Hmong believers hiding in the jungle.
The Lao Peoples Democratic Republic ( LPDR ) is a one-party, authoritarian, military regime that still remains largely under the domination and control of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam ( SRV ). The LPDR is a close ally of Burma and North Korea. Last year, the LPDR regime in Laos held ceremonies honoring North Korea and its leaders.
“Relentless military attacks against Laotian and Hmong civilians as well as political and religious dissident groups have again been intensely launched at Phou Da Phao and Phou Bia Mountians areas of Laos and in other areas of Xieng Khouang Province, Luang Prabang Province and Khammoune Province with apparently no fear of international interference or consequences,” said Vaughn Vang of the Lao Hmong Human Rights Council ( LHHRC ).
“Very intense military attacks by the LPDR regime have occurred since the February 2-10, 2010 against many unarmed Laotian and Hmong groups in hiding in Laos,” Vang explained.
“Reliable sources report that Lao Hmong groups in the remote mountainous areas of Phou Bia, Phou Da Phao, Xieng Khouang Province and Saysamboune Laos have been heavily attacked with significant numbers of LPA and VPA ground troops, mortars, artillery, helicopter gunships and chemical defoliants and other lethal means,” Vang said.
“Currently, the Hanoi-backed Lao government has deployed hundreds of new LPA and VPA troops to launched a merciless and brutal multi-pronged attack against the remaining 4,500-5000 Lao Hmong people who comprise the surviving civilian and religious and political dissident groups still encircled, or in hiding, in the Phou Bia and Phou Da Phao mountain areas of Laos as well as other areas of Saysamboune Special Military Zone and Xieng Khouang Province,” said Philip Smith, Executive Director of the Center for Public Policy Analysis ( CPPA ) in Washington, D.C.
Smith stated further: “In the recent joint Lao - Vietnam military offensive, over 42 Lao Hmong civilians were wounded or killed, with more casualty numbers coming in. Of these people 19 dissident Hmong Protestant and Catholic believers were shot, machine-gunned to death, or slaughtered, by attacking VPA and LPA soldiers as well as helicopter gunships.”
Smith continued: “Helicopter gunship attacks have intensified against Lao Hmong villagers and civilians in Laos, including enclaves of Hmong Protestant Christian, Catholic and Animist believers who have fled to the jungle and mountains because of persecution and to practice their faith and live in freedom outside of the Lao government’s control.”
“LPA and VPA forces are hunting, encircling and attacking Lao and Hmong civilian groups hiding in the jungles and mountains of Laos in an effort to kill, starve them to death, or capture them. Attacks are also now occurring in Xieng Khouang Province, Saysamboune Special Military Zone as well as parts of Vientiane Province, Luang Prabang Province Khammoune Province and elsewhere in Laos,” Smith explained. "Many hundreds of Lao and Hmong people were killed and wounded last year alone by LPA and VPA attacks." http://www.media-newswire.com/release_1095620.html
“With the help of more troops and military advisers from Hanoi, the LPA continues to use food, and starvation, as weapons against the Laotian and Hmong people living outside of the government’s oppressive control,” Smith concluded.
“The Lao and Vietnam joint military assault, with its most recent offensive and attacks, is seeking to wipe out, starve to death, kill or capture all of these innocent Lao Hmong women, children, elderly, and other civilians in February and March,” Vaughn Vang continued.
“The Lao military, with the help of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, is again using its soldiers and helicopters to attack and kill many innocent people and civilians, including those independent Lao and Hmong Christian, Catholic, Animist and Buddhist believers who have fled religious persecution to live in the jungles and mountains of Laos,” Vang said.
Vang concluded: “These 4,500-5000 Laotian and Hmong people in hiding, who are now under intense military attack, are desperately crying out for what could be their last opportunity to appeal for an immediate end to these military attacks on civilians by the Armed Forces of Laos and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam; The Laotian and Hmong people are appealing for assistance from the United States, United Nations, United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the European Union, and others in the international community to seek to end to the LPA’s military aggression and stop these atrocities and human rights and religious freedom abuses; They are urgently appealing to the international community and human rights and humanitarian organizations to help save their lives-- and to help save them from religious and political persecution, torture, and death at the hands of the Lao Communist government and LPA and VPA soldiers.”
In 2004, the U.S. Congress passed H. Res. 402 urging the LPDR regime in Laos to cease military attacks against the Lao and Hmong people.
On November 26, 2009, the European Parliament urged the LPDR regime in Laos to release all political prisoners, dissidents and prisoners of conscience it has arrested and imprisoned, including Lao student leaders and a group of Laotians arrested on November 2, 2009, for seeking to organize a reform march.http://www.onlineprnews.com/news/12936-1259340801-ep-thailand-urged-to-free-hmong-refugees-laos-urged-to-free-students.html
http://www.onlineprnews.com/news/10856-1257565794-laos-vietnam-crisis-activists-moblize-for-human-rights-religious-freedom-before-sea-games.html
Following the conquest and occupation of Laos in 1975 by the North Vietnamese military and communist Pathet Lao guerillas, Hanoi imposed the East Bloc, Soviet-style “Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation” on Laos. The SRV military-imposed Treaty was renewed by Hanoi and Vientiane and serves as a pretext for Hanoi’s continued military, security force and economic intervention in the LPDR in Laos.
Vietnam military-owned companies continue to exploit Laos’ natural resources, including large-scale illegal logging in provinces where Hmong and other minority Laotian people live. The LPA and VPA continue to use military force to evict and drive Laotians and Hmong from their homelands, often for the purpose of military-backed illicit logging, illegal mining, agriculture schemes and hydro-electric projects.
LPA and VPA troops were recently involved in evicting and forcing ordinary Laotians from their land and property in Vientiane Province to make way for a golf course project.
In 2009, high-level SRV and LPDR defense ministry meetings were held. The LPA and VPA also held numerous meetings in Vientiane, Hanoi and elsewhere to discuss joint military cooperation and operational activity in Laos. Various military campaigns and operations were jointly conducted by Laos and Vietnam with hundreds of civilians killed and wounded.
http://www.media-newswire.com/release_1094929.html
http://www.vietnamhumanrights.net/website/MNW_040209.htm
http://www.onlineprnews.com/news/10907-1257617640-mortars-slam-jungle-enclaves-in-laos-killing-wounding-6-hmong.html
The SRV in Hanoi has intensified its attacks on religious believers in Vietnam and Laos, including Hmong Christians and Catholics as well as independent Buddhists.
Vietnamese Hmong Catholics and Protestant believers, with relatives in Laos, have participated in demonstrations against SRV communist party policies in Hanoi. The SRV has violently responded to peaceful protests in Hanoi and Vientiane against reformers and those opposed to the policies of the one-party, Communist ruling elite. http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Hanoi%E2%80%99s-Catholics-continue-protests-defying-the-government%E2%80%99s-ultimatum-11365.html
http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=13246
http://www.vietcatholicnews.com/News/Html/59371.htm
The SRV in Vietnam has used state media to attack Hmong Protestant Christian and Catholic believers.
http://vietcatholic.net/News/Clients/ReadArticle.aspx?ID=58576
In a separate incident that drew international condemnation and outcry,on December 28, 2009, Thailand's Army General Anupong Paochinda ( also spelled Anupong Paojinda )and Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, forcibly repatriated some 4,700 Lao Hmong political refugees and asylum seekers from Thailand back to the communist regime in Laos they fled.
http://www.onlineprnews.com/news/17395-1263356748-laos-secret-jails-and-camps-minnesota-hmong-appeal-for-families-us-citizens-jailed-in-gulag-system.html
http://www.onlineprnews.com/news/16061-1262102519-laos-general-involved-with-atrocities-war-crimes-denials-against-hmong-in-charge-of-repatriation-resettlement.html
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Contact: Mr. Juan Lopez
( 202 ) 543-1444
info@centerforpublicpolicyanalysis.org
CPPA - Center for Public Policy Analysis
2020 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Suite No. #212
Washington, D.C. 20006
Source
Government silences, deports thousands
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Human-rights activists alarmed over Thai move
Editor's Note: Journalist and photographer Anthony C. LoBaido, working along with U.S. Special Forces personnel such as Maj. Carl Bernard, the first Green Beret on the ground to train the Hmong during the secret war in Laos, has worked for more than a decade to document the plight of America's Hmong allies in Southeast Asia. In this update, LoBaido pieces together the mystery surrounding the Hmong's latest repatriation from Thailand to Laos.
HUAY NAM KHAO, Thailand – The Hmong of Laos, popularized most recently in Clint Eastwood's film "Gran Torino," once again are making headlines with the forced deportation of thousands from Thailand.
It was Dec. 28 when the Royal Government of Thailand deported more than 4,000 Hmong against their wishes amid a media blackout, with cell phone conduits shut down. An estimated 5,000 Thai soldiers "supervised."
Among the 4,500 Hmong sent back to Laos were 158 recognized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as meeting the official definition of a refugee. The Netherlands, the U.S., Australia and Canada had offered to accept the refugees.
The Hmong had been held in a camp in Huay Nam Khao in Phetchabun province and inside the Immigration Detention Center in Nong Khai province. Many prayed and wept as they left their temporary homes in Thailand via a convoy of more than 100 buses and trucks. The Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge at the border and points beyond were their de facto final destination.
The expulsion of the Hmong has drawn a firestorm of world condemnation against the Thai government, which insists most of the 4,500 sent back were merely economic refugees. The U.S. and U.N., among others, disagree.
Thailand, a vital American and Western ally dating back to the Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia during World War II, long has been known for its hospitality. Surrounded by the Pathet Lao, Burmese junta, Khmer Rouge and facing an Islamic insurgency in its own southern region, Thailand has stood as a pillar of sanity amid a sea of extremism. Yet after playing host to uncountable thousands of refugees over the past decades, Thailand's patience with the Hmong seems to have finally run out.
Who are the Hmong?
The Hmong have lived a tragic tale for much of the past 200-plus years. Their odyssey reached its apex under Operation White Star, led by U.S. Maj. Carl Bernard among others, when they fought alongside U.S. Special Forces during the Vietnam War in a secret front waged in Laos.
The CIA directed, financed and trained the Hmong during the 1960s and 1970s as the Hmong gave up their peaceful way of life, their families and their farms to rescue downed American pilots and take out Soviet and mainland Chinese supply lines loaded with weaponry that would kill U.S. troops.
Sadly, like other Western and American allies such as the Afrikaners, Kampas of Tibet, Montagnards of Vietnam, Nicaraguan Contras, UNITA in Angola and the Karen of Burma, the Hmong were betrayed and left behind to die when America lost the war and fled Saigon in the infamous 1975 evacuation.
Since that time, the Hmong have languished in Thai refugee camps – with occasional resettlement efforts in countries such as the U.S., France or even French Guyana in South America offering a glimmer of hope for the Hmong remnant.
According to Lao officials, the Hmong who have been returned to Laos have been sent back to their original homes or placed in new villages. Laos is still a communist country that maintains close ties with countries such as North Korea. In fact, Laos and North Korea have an agreement to send back North Koreans fleeing the Hermit Kingdom and repatriate them to Pyongyang.
Lao officials claim that none of the 158 Hmong classified as refugees have asked to be resettled to a third country upon their return to Laos. This is viewed as strange, according to many credible sources who have interviewed them, since they didn't want to be returned to Laos in the first place.
Many Hmong watchers around the world are concerned about the recent repatriation, including the American ambassador to Thailand, Radio Free Asia and Amnesty International.
The persecution of the Hmong was brought to the mind of the general public decades ago through the writings of authors such as Jane Hamilton-Merritt and Dr. Charles Weldon; who documented Hmong women being thrown off cliffs in Laos and having the heads of babies bashed against trees.
Persecution and support
Why is the potential return of the Hmong to Laos seen as a concern to friends of the Hmong all around the world? Perhaps because the Hmong are still seen by the Communist Pathet Lao government as U.S. allies who opposed their rule so long ago and might well do so again.
For example, under the titular leadership of Gen. Vang Pao, Hmong factions in the U.S. have sought to carry on with their "secret war" in Laos. In fact, not long ago, several Hmong were brought up on terrorism charges in the U.S. for just that reason. They are a group of bitter-enders known as the "Jungle Hmong."
Author and former CIA agent Roger Warner, who worked with the Hmong, says the U.S. case will have deadly consequences.
"The real tragedy is that, whatever happens or doesn't happen with this misguided federal court case, some innocent tribal people are being killed," he said. "Why? In part because the U.S. government's labeling the Hmong 'terrorists' has given a couple of Southeast Asian governments all the excuse they ever wanted to treat the Hmong as badly or worse than we've treated anyone in Abu Ghraib."
Will the returning Hmong be persecuted in Laos? That is the question of the hour. Amnesty International has cited "enforced disappearances, torture and arbitrary detention" of Hmong who were repatriated to Laos from other countries such as Thailand.
In a rare show of bipartisan solidarity, America's top lawmakers are attempting to stand up for the Hmong. Nine U.S. senators have written to Thai Prime Ministar Abhisit Vejjajiva to argue against the deportation of the 4,500 Hmong.
Dated Dec. 17, the letter stated, "While we recognize that the Kingdom of Thailand is burdened by the large number of refugees it hosts on its territory, we encourage you not to take steps to repatriate any individuals to Laos at this time. We believe the lack of transparency in the screening and repatriation process only exacerbates these difficulties and heightens international concerns regarding these populations."
The letter was signed by Republicans Lisa Murkowski and Richard Lugar, along with Democrats such as Al Franken of Minnesota, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Barbara Boxer of California, who hail from states with large Hmong immigrant populations.
The Lao government, a party to several important U.N. human rights conventions, has loudly protested claims that the returning Hmong will be persecuted. The government points to reports by international organizations that the Hmong who returned to Laos in 2008 and 2009 have not been abused. Laos has joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, a formerly U.S.-led, anti-communist alliance that now boasts its own Inter-governmental Commission on Human Rights.
Between Jan. 7-9, several U.S. congressmen traveled to Laos and visited with the newly repatriated Hmong at Phalak village outside of the Laotian capital of Vientiene. Eni Faleomavaega, the head of the Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and Global Environment of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, offered testimony at a press conference that the Hmong at Phalak village were not being persecuted.
However, that testimony has not pacified many observers concerned about the status of the recently repatriated Hmong.
Benjamin Zawacki and Brittis Edman of Amnesty International contended Thailand's Dec. 28 deportation of the Hmong "violated [Thailand's] obligations under the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which provides that state parties must not send people to countries where they risk torture. The government also claimed, after holding them [the Hmong] for three years in arbitrary detention in constant fear of forcible return, that the Hmong agreed to return to Laos voluntarily. In fact, the Thai authorities told them that they would be resettled to third countries only if they first agreed to go back to Laos."
Zawaki and Edman, writing in the Jan. 9 edition of the Bangkok Post, also stated "Amnesty International visited the refugees in Nong Khai – including around 90 children – and can attest to their strong fear of the Lao authorities and their desire to resettle somewhere safe. The Hmong in both Nong Khai and Phetchabun also expressed their resistance to returning to Laos through hunger strikes, protests and acts of civil disobediences."
Eric G. John, the U.S. ambassador to Thailand, wrote a half page op-ed piece in the Jan. 13 edition of the Bangkok Post in which he stated, "All the refugees we interviewed in Nong Khai told us on December 28th, that they did not wish to return to Laos, clearly indicating that the return was involuntary. The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program was available to consider referrals of individuals from this community. This was clearly articulated repeatedly by U.S. officials. Both the UNHCR and the Royal Thai Government had, indeed, determined that many among this population were in need of protection. And the United States, along with many other countries, stood ready to provide third-country resettlement as an option, but this course was not allowed."
Desperately seeking the Hmong
The U.N. refugee agency officially stated Jan. 29 that it has "no access" to the thousands of ethnic Hmong expelled from Thailand to Laos. The U.S. report was gathered and disseminated just as Radio Free Asia sensationally reported the Lao government had set up a new secret prison inside Borlikhamsay Province, Laos, for the recently returning Hmong and that some of those Hmong were being held inside the prison.
The Radio Free Asia report in turn led Bouasieng Champaphanh, a brigadier general and the head of the Lao-Thai border security subcommittee, to issue a statement to the Vientiane Times which simply said, "There is no secret jail."
The general also has invited international diplomats to visit the Hmong in Borlikhamsay Province in "two months" because of the preparations needed as the "roads are in bad condition, and there is no appropriate place for helicopters to land at the moment."
Additionally, the Deputy Prime Minister of Laos, Somsavat Lengsavat, has gone on record claiming his government will give all returning Hmong families nine rai of farming land upon their repatriation to Laos. A rai is 1,600 square meters, and there are 2.25 rai in one acre.
For now, the Hmong must await the most recent "final verdict" in their never-ending, complex saga. Pushing matters to a head, 16 watchdog groups including Amnesty International, sent a letter Feb. 2 to Choummaly Sayasone, the president of Laos and expressed "serious concerns for the safety and protection" of the Hmong that had just been repatriated from Thailand. They asked for all 158 UNHCR-qualified Hmong to be immediately sent to third countries.
The letter read in part, "Given the difficulties faced by some prior Hmong returnees, we urge you to immediately allow unhindered and continuous access by UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations to all returnees."
Addressing the need for Americans to keep a watchful eye on the most recent deportation of the Hmong, Robert Charette, a full-blooded American Indian and ex-U.S. Army Special Forces operator, said, "I would say our obligations sort of dictate it. The Hmong are a resilient and incredibly stout-hearted people; they will be waiting on patriotic Americans. Meanwhile, commit them to the Lord."
Fran Keck and his wife Shirley of Hmong International Ministries in Atlanta, Ga., have been traveling throughout Northern Thailand over the past few weeks visiting the Hmong people. In an interview with WND, Fran Keck lamented, "People have been killing Hmong for thousands of years. In 1800, the Chinese killed 500,000. No matter what happens now, someone will continue to kill them in the future."
Source
Legislators appeal to Laos to aid Hmong
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Deported from Thailand to Laos, ethnic Hmong raise concern among members of Congress
Wisconsin lawmakers and other members of Congress are concerned about the safety of ethnic Hmong recently deported from Thailand to Laos.
Reps. Steve Kagen, D-Appleton, and Ron Kind, D-La Crosse, and Democratic Sens. Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl joined several of their House and Senate colleagues in signing letters to the deputy prime minister of the Lao People's Democratic Republic, calling for humane treatment of the returnees.
On Dec. 28, the Thai government repatriated more than 4,000 Lao Hmong who had been living in refugee camps. Human rights groups condemned the deportation, fearing that many of the Hmong would be persecuted by the communist Lao government.
The Hmong aided the United States in the Vietnam War and Secret War in Laos.
"As you know, the United States shares a unique history with the Hmong people," said the Jan. 13 letter signed by Kagen, Kind and 10 other House members. "As such, many members of the U.S. Congress are troubled by the sudden, mass-repatriation of the Lao Hmong."
The lawmakers urged the Lao government to allow the United Nations and other agencies access to the returnees to assess their well-being.
Both the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees and the U.S. State Department have condemned the forced return of Lao Hmong and have urged the Lao government to admit international monitors.
Vaughn Vang, director of the Lao Human Rights Council in Green Bay, said Hmong living in the United States and other countries are afraid that many returnees will be tortured and subject to other abuse. "We are very scared there will be state persecutions," Vang said.
"Not now, because the international eye is watching, but in the next three months, (the returnees) will slowly begin to disappear."
Note: On 14 January 2010, UNPO and 67 global organizations have issued a joint statement calling for Asian states to reaffirm commitment to safeguarding asylum seekers threatened with a return to torture and persecution. To read the joint statement click here.
Source
Lao govt reiterates policy for Hmong returnees
Monday, February 1, 2010
A senior diplomat has announced that the Lao government will be happy to arrange visits to Hmong returnees requested by foreign ambassadors when they have been properly resettled, while reiterating the government's humanitarian policy to the returnees.
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Phongsavath Boupha restated the position to ambassadors of European Union countries, the United States and Australia recently when the ambassadors called on him to request information on the situation of the Hmong returnees.
Hmong returnees would be able to live in villages of their own choice, he told the ambassadors, adding that the government had provided them with food, clothing and medicines on arrival in their homeland.
Later, the returnees were transported to their original villages or to live with relatives or in government-resettlement villages.
Mr Phongsavath said the government's long-term plan was to build a house for each family in the resettlement villages and allocate land for farming activities.
The government will also build gravity-fed water systems, toilets, roads and schools as well as expanding the electricity network to include the villages, he said, adding that hospitals would also be available in village groups.
The government will also provide food to the returnees until they are able to make their own living, as well as one year of free electricity use.
The deputy minister reaffirmed to the ambassadors that receiving the returnees reflects the extension of the government's humanitarian policy to its citizens.
During the meeting, Mr Phongsavath thanked foreign diplomats for their concern for Lao citizens and explained that the Lao government was even more concerned about its citizens than foreigners, because these Hmong people had been lured to a foreign country. The Hmong were the concern of Laos and it was the duty of the Lao government to protect them and agree to bring them home.
Mr Phongsavath said the Lao PDR is a party to many UN human rights treaties, and the government took care to implement these treaties as fully as possible, especially those relating to political rights and citizenship.
Being deceived by people smugglers, in 2004 the Hmong began flocking to Thailand . More than 7,000 departed Laos and became economic migrants in Thailand , including 158 who were detained in the Immigration Detention Centre in Thailand 's Nong Khai province.
Most had paid a large amount of money to people smugglers to take them from Laos to a detention camp in Thailand 's Phetchabun province. Many became homeless after selling everything they owned in Laos and their children received no schooling.
The Lao and Thai governments deemed the migrants to be illegal and agreed to address the issue through bilateral channels.
I n 2006, the two governments began cooperating to repatriate them until the last group was brought back to Laos on December 28 last year.
Since then the Lao government has arranged for visits by international delegations and foreign ambassadors to Phalak, the government resettlement village in Kasy district, Vientiane province, to witness the situation first hand.
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