Laos Military Heightens Persecution of Hmong Religious Groups

Saturday, May. 9, 2009 Posted: 7:13:30PM HKT

(Photo: Licensed Creative Commons 2.5)

Dozens of Hmong religious leaders have already been forcibly repatriated in the past months where they were “persecuted, disappeared, imprisoned, [or] summarily executed by the LPDR military and security forces, according to Smith.

The LDPR security forces have also been targeting Hmong political and religious dissident groups hiding in jungles and mountains in the country, executing military attacks, mass starvation and ethnic cleansing operations especially in the provinces of Vientiane, Xieng Khouang, Luang Prabang and Khammoune, resulting in thousands of unarmed Hmong civilian deaths, including women and children and hundreds of Christians and animists.

The one-party, authoritarian military regime in Laos is also closely allied with Myanmar and North Korea, the statement highlighted. A recent crackdown in Myanmar on hundreds of Buddhist monks saw the LPDR regime providing a safe-haven and sanctuary to the families of the Myanmar generals and military officers responsible for their killing, arrest and disappearance.

Lao security forces have also targeted key independent, dissident Buddhist worshippers in Thailand, including several Lao American citizens who have been gunned down in Thailand in recent years, including at temples bordering Laos. The Lao government closely monitors and controls key temples in Laos, especially in Vientiane, where some monks work as agents and informants, stated Smith.

A United States Commission on Religious Freedom report released on May 1 in Washington, D.C. officially put Laos back on the ‘Watch List’ as a result of the LPDR’s horrific religious persecution of the Laotian and Hmong people in Laos and its lack of transparency on religious freedom issues, the CPPA executive director said.

Since the issuance of the USCIRF report, Lao and Hmong organisations have been urging the body to list Laos as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) along with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, which has intervened militarily, politically and with its security forces in recent years. The groups cite high-level military intervention by Hanoi in Laos and senior level defense ministry meetings and newly concluded agreements as further evidence that Vietnam “largely [controls] and [exploits] Laos and the LPDR leadership and LPA as a proxy regime for its strategic, tactical and policy ambitions, according to Smith.

An AFP report on February 4 featured a senior Lao official involved in repatriating ethnic minority Hmong who sought asylum in Thailand who denied allegations that Laos security forces used force in repatriating them, put them under arbitrary detention and mistreated them.

Although human rights organisations have charged the LPDR with acts of persecution, vice chairman of the Lao Front for National Edification Tong Yeu Thor said that those are stories fabricated by the Hmong so as to win resettlement in the more developed, neighbouring Thailand.

The Hmong people are targets of state persecution largely because of some of them had served under CIA advisers during a so-called ‘secret war’ against communists in Laos.

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Edmond Chua
edmond@christianpost.com