Rep. Kind sends letter to Lao government

Washington, DC (News Release) – U.S. Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI) recently sent a letter to the Government of Laos expressing concern for the safety of the Lao Hmong asylum seekers who were repatriated by the Royal Thai Government.

"Many district residents have family and friends who are affected by this action," said Rep Kind. "It is imperative that we remain actively engaged in the issue to protect these refugees and ensure that the Government of Laos allows international monitoring for safety and resettlement."

Nearly 4,700 Lao Hmong were repatriated by the Royal Thai Government to Laos earlier this month. The safety and wellbeing of these refugees is of great concern, considering the Hmong people's previous involvement in Laos during the Vietnam War on behalf of the United States. The letter asks the Government of Laos to treat all of the returnees humanely, guarantee access to the international community for independent monitoring, and allow those who are eligible for resettlement to be resettled without delay. The letter also asks the Government of Laos to uphold the promises made in July 2009 to not arrest the returnees as well as not punish them for wrong doings in the past, but instead, provide them protection, security and freedom.

"The safety of the recently repatriated Lao Hmong is very concerning. In the future, I'd like the opportunity to visit Laos to check out the resettlement camps, hear safety concerns of those who have been recently moved, and speak to government leaders to ensure the repatriated people are closely monitored and are treated fairly."

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Guest column: U.S. policy failure had hand in Hmong refugee crisis

Hmong-Americans in Green Bay are suffering because of the recent mass forced return of their loved ones from refugee camps in Thailand back to Laos over the holidays. Tragically, with the help of Washington bureaucrats, America once again has helped betray many of its former Hmong allies who served with U.S. clandestine and military forces during the Vietnam War.
More than 4,700 Hmong were forced by the Thai Army back to Laos, where they had fled political and religious persecution. Journalists from "The Age" in Australia have now discovered that many Hmong returnees are being held in secret razor-wire ringed camps far from the "Potemkin Village" model, propaganda camps Laos shows to foreign visitors.

Key U.S. diplomats have chosen to ignore overwhelming evidence of human rights abuses against the Hmong people, including horrific attacks by the Lao military on civilians and dissidents, and instead stressed promoting free trade with the one-party, communist regime in Laos. Tragically, these officials, including the current U.S. ambassador to Laos, Ravic Huso, helped facilitate the forced repatriation policy, despite opposition by key members of Congress as well as human rights and refugee organizations.



Huso has encouraged the return of Hmong refugees from Thailand to Laos despite concerns raised by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Doctors Without Borders (MSF). He has repeatedly ignored human rights violations against the Hmong in Laos and returnees from Thailand, who have disappeared or have been imprisoned, tortured or killed at the hands of Lao military forces in recent years.

After repeated State Department stonewalling and mixed messages on this plight of the Hmong refugees, nine senators including U.S. Sens. Russell Feingold, D-Middleton, Herb Kohl, D-Milwaukee, and Richard Lugar, R-Ind., sent a letter on Dec. 17 directly to Thai Prime Minister Abhisit urging him to halt the forced return of the Hmong to Laos.

On Christmas Eve, the State Department finally issued a long-overdue public statement urging Thailand to cease the forced return of the Hmong. It lacked teeth. The Thai Army and Prime Minister Abhisit ignored the State Department appeal. It was too little, too late.

Clearly, the State Department's public message to Thailand should have been articulated at a higher level, much sooner, to seek to reverse this policy failure and help save the Hmong from forced repatriation to Laos.

Philip Smith is executive director of the Center for Public Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C. E-mail info@centerforpublicpolicyanalysis.org.

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For Hmong Hunters, a Guiding Voice in Their New Home

Yia Yang, who hosts a Hmong radio show about hunting, and an on-air guest, Capt. Roy Griffith, who runs California’s hunter education program.

SACRAMENTO — Along the barren airwaves of AM radio in Northern California, somewhere between gospel music and traffic updates, Yia Yang can be heard telling his devoted listeners to always be aware of their gun muzzles.

A 50-year-old Hmong immigrant from northern Laos, Mr. Yang is the host of a regular all-things-hunting program on KJAY 1430-AM. The station serves one of the nation’s largest Hmong populations — one for whom the link between hunting and survival is still palpable.

“In Laos a main source of food was wildlife,” said Mr. Yang, who owns a used-car lot in Sacramento, a city with more than 16,000 Hmong residents.

He said hunting brought back memories of the mountainous wilds of Laos, where his older brother, who he said was a soldier trained by the Central Intelligence Agency, taught him to shoot raccoon-like creatures out of trees.

During the Vietnam War, the C.I.A. covertly trained the Hmong to fight, unsuccessfully it turned out, against a Communist takeover in Laos. After the war, many Hmong fled to refugee camps in Thailand. From there, more than 200,000 immigrated to the United States, settling largely in the Central Valley of California and in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

“In Laos, a big part of the traditional role for men was to provide meat,” said Paul Hillmer, a professor of history and director of the Hmong Oral History Project at Concordia University in St. Paul. “The adjustment for Hmong men in this country was getting used to things like private-property boundaries, hunting licenses and regulations.”

So Mr. Yang patiently answers a steady stream of callers from all over the Sacramento Valley, whose questions range from the mundane — Do I need a special license to hunt deer with a bow and arrow? (No, but a hunting license is required, as is a deer tag for archery.) — to the exotic. How, exactly, one hunter wanted to know, was he to deliver the severed head of the black bear he had shot to the State Department of Fish and Game, as required by law. (Present the skull — even if damaged — to a department office or officer within 10 days of killing the bear.)

State officials praise Mr. Yang for translating the nitty-gritty of fish and game law for people from an ethnic group that can be wary of authority figures.

Capt. Roy Griffith, who runs the fish and game agency’s hunter education program and has been an on-air guest of Mr. Yang, said Mr. Yang provided “a huge service to the state.”

Although the number of California hunting licenses issued has fallen steadily since the 1960s, the number of requests for hunter education training courses in languages other than English is booming, Mr. Griffith said.

“We’re desperate for Spanish-speaking instructors and deep in need of Asian languages, too,” he said.

State agencies overseeing hunting and fishing in Minnesota and Wisconsin have hired Hmong speakers to educate, translate and work as cultural ambassadors to the Laotian immigrant population.

California depends on about 850 volunteer instructors, including Mr. Yang, to teach the 10-hour hunter education and gun safety course required for anyone seeking a hunting license. Classes are available in Hmong, Spanish, Russian, German and Mandarin, but with fewer than 15 bilingual instructors, supply does not begin to keep up with demand.

There is a waiting list of more than 30 people to take the next class offered by Mr. Yang, who was the state’s first Hmong language hunting instructor. There are now two more, both in Fresno.

When Mr. Yang does not have an answer to a question, he often turns to Mr. Griffith.

On a recent afternoon Mr. Griffith drove his green, state-issued S.U.V. down to the studio to answer tricky hunting questions.

“I want to remind your listeners of new regulations for upland game birds like quail and grouse,” he said into a microphone, in English. “You now have to leave a fully feathered wing or head attached to the body until you get home and put it in your freezer,”

Mr. Yang turned to his own microphone and repeated the message, in Hmong.

KJAY 1430-AM broadcasts from a rundown mobile home by the Sacramento River, on the city’s west side. The station plays Hmong programming during the day with hourlong segments dedicated to traditional music and talk shows focusing on the latest Hmong international news.

Occasionally on Mr. Yang’s show cultural collisions trump hunting regulations or advice on how to skin a deer. In 2007 a Hmong man out hunting squirrels in the woods of northeastern Wisconsin was killed by a white hunter. Three years earlier a Hmong hunter had shot and killed six white hunters in the northwestern part of the state.

After the shootings, hunters across the Hmong diaspora called Mr. Yang on air and off. “They asked me, ‘Is it safe for us to go hunting? What should we do?’ ” he recalled. He devoted several hourlong programs to the shootings.

“After that, a lot of people and a lot of elders quit hunting because they were afraid,” he said.

In the winter when bear and deer hunting seasons are closed, Mr. Yang’s program is heard less often, but occasionally he does take to the air with talk of hunting wild pigs, ducks and squirrels.

“People are calling on the radio asking me, ‘How many squirrels can I bring home?’ ” he said. “I tell them four. Squirrel soup with a lot of hot peppers is very popular.”

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Hmong refugees to be resettled in 30 days

A group of 158 UNHCR-recognized Hmong refugees were promised they’d be allowed to resettle in third-countries. That was supposed to be the deal which the UNHCR, Thai and Lao governments had agreed upon, according to a Thai government spokesperson. The UNHCR was supposed to have immediate access to the group after the Thai military forced them back to Laos on December 28, 2009.

On the day these refugees were to be deported, representatives from the U.S, Australia, Canada and Netherlands showed up trying to allay the refugees’ fears by explaining that a deal had been brokered with the Lao government. The representatives assured them that they’d be allowed to resettle in third-countries within a month upon returning to Laos and that the UNHCR would have access to them during that period.

Well, things turned out quite the contrary. Thirty days after being deported the secretive Lao government continues to deny the UNHCR access to the group claiming that these returnees no longer want to be resettled in third-countries as originally agreed upon.

On Monday, General Bouasieng Champaphanh, Chairman of the Lao-Thai border security sub-committee, held a press conference in Vientiane regarding the fate of these Hmong returnees. The event was staged for diplomats and international media to help quell concerns they may have regarding the treatment of these returnees.

Just two weeks ago, foreign journalists reported visiting a secret camp where returnees were being held behind razor wire fences. When the journalists approached the camp, Lao authorities searched and interrogated them, checking their cameras for any unauthorized photos of the camp, telling them not to come back.

General Bouasieng’s recent press conference seemed in part to address this embarrassing issue. Lao government propaganda photos posted on flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/mofa/4308444338/ show a reporter from Radio Free Asia interviewing the General, who is quoted as saying “There is no secret jail at all in Borlikhamxay province. I can take you to visit the province tomorrow to find out the information first hand if you want,”

Most likely the General made this bold statement because the razor wire camp was a returnee transit camp and more than likely empty by now. Currently, over 3200 of the returnees have been sent to a site called Pabeua. It’s located in eastern Paksan district, Borikhamsai province, roughly several hours drive down dirt roads. Run by at least 100 Lao troops, it might more accurately be described as an internment camp, as no one is allowed to visit the area and residents have no freedom of movement.

Roughly 120 UNHCR-recognized refugees are believed to be held here. They were supposed to have been resettled in third countries by now but the Lao government continues to deny access to the group telling the world that these refugees have decided to stay in Laos.

More disgraceful than the Lao government’s secretiveness regarding this matter is the fact that those third countries who reached out to resettle these Hmong have not lived up to their end of the bargain. Hopefully, in the coming days, they will take some serious diplomatic action to secure the safety of these Hmong refugees.

They need to demand immediate unfettered access to these returnees before it’s too late rather than be a pawn in the Lao government's continuing propaganda campaign.

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Bremer Foundation focuses east metro giving on anti-poverty efforts

Charlotte Johnson is guided by the spirit of Otto Bremer.

But she is also chained to his ghost.

Johnson is one of three trustees at the Otto Bremer Foundation, the St. Paul philanthropic organization founded by the German immigrant banker in 1944. Johnson and fellow trustees William Lipschultz and Daniel C. Reardon approve the grants awarded by the foundation bimonthly.

Last year, Johnson says, the foundation gave away roughly $23.5 million in the Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota communities where Bremer operates banks. That’s down 10.6 percent from the $28.7 million it gave away in 2008 and down 26.8 percent from the $32.1 it gave out in 2007-an indication that the economic downturn has hurt Bremer just as it has impaired other private foundations’ ability to give.

Otto Bremer had very distinct goals for the money he set aside to create the foundation that bears his name. For example, he specifically wanted it used to fight poverty in St. Paul, the city where Bremer lived. That tradition continues in the east metro and throughout the Twin Cities, Johnson says.

However, the foundation’s founder also wanted his money used in ways more reflective of his own times than ours.

For instance, he wanted foundation money used to fund orphanages, not many of which still exist. Trustees have gotten around that by convincing the courts that Bremer’s real concern was with the welfare of children, Johnson says, so money has been redirected to education and other children’s services.

If trustees ever wanted to make their own mark by designating foundation money to, say, the battle against global warming, they would be out of luck. Bremer never mentioned anything remotely like that in his directives, Johnson says, and there is no way the courts-which check in with the foundation every three years to make sure the founder’s wishes are being followed-could be convinced that he did.

The foundation gets applications from art museums and historical societies frequently, but the trustees must turn all those requests down. “That wasn’t what Otto talked about, so, sorry,” Johnson says. “It’s not my money and I can’t decide how to use it. We have to do what he wanted.”

Nonetheless, Bremer has many opportunities for giving.

Last year alone the foundation handed out more than 700 grants ranging from $10,000 to $100,000.

When they were most needed

Trustees retain enough flexibility that in January 2009, for the first time, the Otto Bremer Foundation and Bremer banks jointly set aside $4 million for a one-time Emergency Relief Fund, providing direct assistance to individuals hit hard by the nose-diving economy.

The fund provided assistance to families and individuals struggling to pay for food, housing, health care and transportation.

“It was obvious that there was a real need and that maybe we should just dedicate some funds to emergency relief,” Johnson says. “And that was true throughout the whole Bremer system. But the Twin Cities has more people, so there was more evidence of need there.”

That evidence came in the form of a flood of applications for assistance-$21 million in requests in all. “That was almost the full year’s grant budget, and this was just one piece of what we wanted to do,” Johnson says. “We didn’t want this to be instead of everything else that we do.”

The fund ultimately totaled $4 million and went out to 81 community organizations.

One recipient was the St. Paul-based Hmong American Partnership, a community organization that serves the Hmong populations in Hennepin and Ramsey counties.

CEO Bao Vang says that the $50,000 her organization got from Bremer provided a kind of safety net beneath a safety net for her organization’s clients. The money was divvied up among 76 Hmong families who had used up every other community and state resource at their disposal.

Those families were allowed to tap into the $50,000 Bremer Emergency Relief Fund as a last resort, Vang says, each receiving grants from $300 to $1,000.

“I think Bremer came at the time when the community needed them the most,” Vang says. “I commend them for their leadership and really looking at the issues, and for listening to the community partner agencies on the ground who bring these issues and challenges to their attention.”

The Hmong American Partnership received a second grant from Bremer in November, this one for $35,000 as part of the foundation’s normal bimonthly grant cycle. Although not part of the Emergency Relief Fund disbursement, that money helped pay for transportation expenses for 175 job-seeking clients.

The money covered car repairs, monthly bus passes and other transportation costs for people who needed help getting to job fairs, interviews or training programs, Vang says.

St. Paul-based La Familia Guidance Center, an outpatient mental health service center that caters to the Hispanic community, was also among the Bremer grant recipients in November.

Jose Santos Jr., the center’s executive director of community affairs, says that the $10,000 award allowed his center to help uninsured and underinsured Hispanic young people in the Hennepin County school system pay for needed psychological attention.

“The money we got from Otto Bremer is very much appreciated,” Santos says. “It helps bridge the gap so that we can provide services to these kids.”

Hard choices

Bremer has traditionally allocated its grants to communities in rough proportion to the income that they bring into Bremer banks, and the foundation continues to reach for that benchmark.

The bank’s Twin Cities branches currently bring in roughly 25 percent of the banks’ income stream, says Johnson, who like the two other trustees is also on the bank’s board of directors. “Our overarching guiding principal is that in any year’s budget, we try to keep the Twin Cities portion of the grants at roughly a quarter of total grants,” she says.

That is not easy, she says, because there are many more community service organizations in the Twin Cities than in, say, Max, N.D., where Bremer has one of its oldest branches. But smaller communities have needs, too, Johnson says. Finding the right mix is a tremendous challenge.

“It is hard,” says Johnson, who succeeded her father, Gordon Shepard, as a trustee in 1990. “It is very easy to be moved by all kinds of stories-and they are great stories from good people who are passionate and love their work and what they’re doing.

“But ultimately, the way I think of it, we are successful if individuals’ lives are improved.”

One way that the trustees avoid getting emotionally conflicted by those choices is by delegating the due diligence work to the foundation’s six-member staff. They review grant applications, interview applicants, then decide as a group whom to recommend to the trustees for grant awards.

Trustees then have little to do but say yes or no, Johnson says. Sometimes, she says, no is the best answer for everyone involved.

“Sometimes an organization just doesn’t have the infrastructure,” Johnson says. “You see times when it’s just a husband and wife operation. Maybe they don’t have a director, there is no one guiding them to tell them if they’re doing it right or wrong. If you can read that ahead of time, you can save them a whole lot of agony.”

Johnson says Bremer’s trustees are getting ready to announce their next round of grants at the end of this week. They also are planning strategy meetings in February to set grant-making priorities for the rest of 2010 and beyond.

“For the Twin Cities,” she says, “we will certainly give some thought about how to effectively grant within this huge metropolitan area. We may pick two or three particular areas that were mentioned in (Otto Bremer’s) directives and more intently focus on those.”

Whatever the foundation does, it has no choice but to continue asking the same question that’s been asked since Otto Bremer tapped the original trio of trustees seven decades ago: What would Otto do?

It would be nice if Bremer were still around to ask, but since he died in 1951, the group doesn’t have that luxury. “We tried a séance,” Johnson jokes. “He didn’t show up.”

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