Release Date: 2008-03-20
Original Link: http://presszoom.com/story_144061.html
Source: Center for Public Policy Analysis
The Lao Human Rights Council, Inc. of Wisconsin and Minnesota issued an appeal to U.S. Ambassador to Laos Ravic Huso to stop the mass killing of the Laotian and Hmong people. U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), U.S. Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI), Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN), Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Members of Congress and the Center for Public Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C. were also sent the appeal about the crisis in Laos and Thailand.
(PressZoom.com) - Washington,D.C., March 20, 2008, The Lao Human Rights Council, Inc. of Wisconsin and Minnesota issued an appeal to U.S. Ambassador to Laos Ravic Huso seeking to stop the killing and mass starvation of thousands of innocent, unarmed Laotian and Hmong people. U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), U.S. Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI), Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN), Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Members of Congress and the Center for Public Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C. were also sent the appeal about the crisis in Laos and Thailand.
Last week, on March 13, 2008, the Lao Human Rights Council and a coalition of Lao and Hmong organizations helped to organize rallies in Madison and LaCrosse, Wisconsin and St. Paul, Minnesota, to protest the Lao regime's killing and persecution of the Lao and Hmong people.http://www.media-newswire.com/release_1062130.html
Ambassador Huso is visiting Milwaukee, Wisconsin today and visited St. Paul, Minnesota earlier in the week where his visit was denounced by many Lao and Hmong organizations and community leaders who are concerned about the current crisis in Laos and Thailand facing the Laotian and Hmong people.http://www.media-newswire.com/release_1062582.html
"Ambassador Ravic Huso is being staunchly criticized for his appeasement of the Lao regime and failure to aggressively work to halt the ethnic cleansing operations and intensified military attacks of the Lao military now directed against thousands of unarmed Hmong civilians in Laos," stated Philip Smith, Executive Director of the Center for Public Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C. "Ambassador Ravic Huso, and the Bush Administration, have the stench of betrayal and a catastrophic, Darfur-like policy failure hovering over their heads that will likely haunt them and the United States for years to come as thousands more of American's former allies suffer and die," Smith continued.
"Ambassador Ravic Huso and the Bush Administration are clearly out of touch with the reality of the terrible Bosnia-like situation on the ground in Laos facing the suffering Laotian and Hmong people as reported by the New York Times, Amnesty International and other independent sources," Smith said.
Smith continued: "Ambassador Ravic Huso has clearly sought to white-wash the Lao goverment's horrific atrocities and military attacks against unarmed civilians and he is being slammed by many in the Lao and Hmong community for his failure to seriously pursue this critical matter as well as the case of three Hmong-American citizens from St. Paul, Minnesota. Mr. Hakit Yang and the other two Hmong-American citizens were arrested and are currently imprisoned in Laos, but Ambassador Huso has done almost nothing to address this matter. Moreover, Ambassador Huso reportedly providing thousands of dollars in U.S. taxpayers money to the Lao government for a library grant recently while the Lao military was attacking, killing and starving to death thousands of unarmed Hmong civilians," Smith concluded.http://www.presszoom.com/story_144046.html
The lack of press freedom in Laos remains a serious problem. Western journalists continue to enter Laos to cover the crisis facing the Hmong and Laotian people trapped in the Jungle. However, Ambassador Huso, and the U.S. Embassy in Laos, are further criticized for continuing to understate, and underestimate, the number of Hmong and Laotian civilians current trapped and under attack by the Lao and Vietnamese military in key provinces in Laos, which numbers some 15,000 unarmed people. The U.S. Embassy in Laos falsely told the New York Times, in a December 17, 2008, article about the crisis in Laos that only a few thousand Hmong are in hiding in the jungele.http://www.presszoom.com/story_144026.html
Sadly, Mr. Ravic Huso, the current U.S. Ambassador to Laos claimed that he and the Bush dministration were, ‘respectful of human rights.’ By allowing some 8,000 Hmong refugees from Ban Huay Nam Khao, Petchanbun Provice, Thailand, to be returned, the Ambassador has broken the trust given to him as a U.S. Ambassador. According to his statement to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he promised to, ‘work steadfastly to encourage the Lao government to respect the rights of its minority ethnic groups.’ To date, there has been no change except to increase military action against the Hmong people for whom Ambassador Huso promised, ‘to work with the Lao and Thai authorities and appropriate international agencies to find durable solutions to the plight of the displaced Hmong.’ It is becoming quote obvious that the Ambassador has broken his promise to the U.S. Senate and the American people whom me represents.
Schuyler Merritt, Research Director for the Center for Public Policy Analysis observed: "Indeed, evidence from Medicine Sans Frontieres ( Doctors Without Borders ) has shown that many (Hmong and Lao) refugees in Thailand have wounds from military weapons and suffer severe psychological trauma from their time being chased through the Lao jungle by the Lao PDR military. Thailand is violating the jus cogens (higher law ) of the international community prohibiting genocide and the complicity in genocide. By sending these people back to Laos under the guise of illegal economic migrant workers, Thailand is participating in and is actively supporting Lao PDR state sponsored genocide, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing in a campaign of terror which has lasted since the end of 1975."
Vaughn Vang and the Lao Human Rights Council, Inc. have also sought to raise awareness in the U.S. Congress and Washington, D.C., about the crisis in Laos as well as the plight of some 8,000 Lao-Hmong refugees under threat of forced repatriation in Thailand. A letter signed by five (5) U.S. Senators, including Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI), Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI), Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN),Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) was sent to the Bush Administration in January regarding this matter. http://www.media-newswire.com/release_1061830.html
http://www.media-newswire.com/release_1060338.html
Vaughn Vang, Executive Director of the Lao Human Rights Council, Inc. issued the following appeal to Members of Congress in Washington, D.C. and to U.S. Ambassador Ravic Huso who is visiting Milwaukee, Wisconsin today:
"Dear Ambassador Huso,
Re: Human Rights Violations in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (LPDR)
On behalf of the Lao Human Rights Council, we are gravely concerned about the atrocities taking place against our people in Laos by the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (LPDR). As our U.S. Ambassador to Laos, we want to know what efforts you have taken on these humanitarian issues. Your U.S. tour agenda indicates that you will be promoting travel, trade and business investment in Laos. . We believe that saving the lives of our relatives should take precedence over promoting LPDR interests.
It is important to note the following points:
1.) following the end of the U.S. Secret War in Laos in 1975, tens of thousands of Hmong who were involved in the U.S. Secret army were killed others were sent to re-education camps, jailed, tortured, mistreated and summarily executed by the LPDR authorities;
2.) fearful of ill-treatment, mass arrests, violence, retribution, and persecution by the LPDR regime were factors pushing thousands of Hmong families to flee the country after 1975, most of whom resettled in third countries, including the United States;
3.) fearful of ill-treatment, arrestments, violence, retribution, and persecution by the LPDR were also factors driving thousands of Hmong families to inaccessible forest and mountain areas, which are strictly isolated from outside world;
4.) the military of the LPDR has continuously launched attacks by using chemical weapons, air attacks, ground attacks, and starvation tactics to exterminate the Hmong in hiding which includes women and children. Tens of thousands of them have been poisoned, killed, and died from hunger.
5.) Hmong women and young girls in hiding have been repeatedly raped, tortured, brutally stabbed, and killed by the military of the LPDR, especially while they were foraging for food, as documented by Amnesty International, including digging roots for food because they are being starved by the LPDR regime;
6.) Amnesty International, one of the most respected human rights organizations, issued a major report on the dire situation for the Hmong in the Lao jungles on March 23, 2007 entitled “Lao People’s Democratic Republic: Hiding in the Jungle: Hmong under Threat” in which Amnesty concludes that the LPDR uses food (starvation) as a weapon against the Hmong. AI Index: ASA 26/003/2007
7.) Amnesty International also called on “the Lao authorities to permit access for United Nations bodies and other international, independent monitors to monitor “ the well-being of those hiding in the jungle.
8.) Nobel Peace Prize winner, Doctors Without Borders, in an October 2007 bulletin described what its Program Manager for Thailand reported about Hmong who had fled Laos: ‘A majority of this population came from Laos forests. I was in Huai Nam Khao camp in February and I was shocked. The refugees I spoke to described horrible living conditions. They talked of hiding in the forest, enduring starvation and fearing persecution. They had no access to medical care.’
9.) three U.S. Hmong citizens were arrested in August 2007 by the LPDR authorities in Phonesavanh, Xienkhouang, Laos. To this day, the families have not been given access to these these three U.S. Hmong citizens by the LPDR regime who continues to imprison them in Laos. The men were Hakit Yang, 29. Cong Shi Neng Yang, 31, and Trillion Yunhaison, 41. The families last heard from them on 8/25/2007, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune (9/3/2007);
10.) Radio Free Asia reportedly broadcast on 02/27/2008, “For the past year, those who kill a Hmong Fighter have been promised automatic grass-roots Communist Party membership and a one-step promotion, together with a reward of six million kip (U.S. $600) per head, said the (Lao) military official, who requested anonymity”;
11.) forced repatriation against the will of 12 Hmong asylum seekers from refugee compounds in Thailand back to Laos in Feb. 2008 by physical force and the use of attack dogs by the Thai military. Forcible repatriation is a serious human rights violation. To this day, there has been no official confirmation of their location or condition in Laos. We, however, have received numerous reports from reliable sources that some of them were badly treated and one man was killed by LPDR security forces.
12.) the LPDR military crackdown on Christians continues; many have been killed and detained in prisons and persecuted in Laos. A recent news article, Compass Direct News, March 11, 2008, indicated that the LPDR authorities have arrested Hmong Christians at Bokeo District, totaling 58 people.
To this end, we call upon you as our U.S. Ambassador to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic to take strong measures on the following:
(a) Take measures to ensure that the LPDR regime immediately stop all armed forces, and the Lao Peoples Army (LPA) as well as the Peoples Army of Vietnam (PAVN) seeking to capture, kill and exterminate the Hmong people, especially thousands of innocent women and children, in hiding in the jungles and mountains of Laos;
(b) Take measures to ensure that the LPDR regime fulfills its obligation to respect the international standard of human rights laws, which the LPDR regime has signed but continues to violate;
(c) Take measures to ensure that LPDR regime allows the United Nations and the International Community to provide humanitarian aid to the Hmong people in hiding and trapped and encircled by Lao military forces;
(d) Take measures to ensure that LPDR regime establishes transparency through allowing the United Nations, International Community, and independent third-parties, such as Amnesty International, to monitor without LPDR oversight or involvement, which could help foster trust and safety for Hmong in-hiding in the jungles of Laos so that the LPDR killing will stop and the Hmong people can survive and they can live in peace;
(e) Investigate aggressively the fate of the 21 teenage girls, 6 teenage boys along with a Hmong adult woman, who were forced to return to Laos from Thailand in December 2005;
(f) Investigate aggressively the arrest and where-about the three U.S. Hmong citizens who were arrested in Phonesavanh, Xiengkhouang by the LPDR authorities in August 2007;
Your immediate intervention would help to potentially save thousands of lives of innocent Hmong and Laotian people including women and children, who are currently on the run-in-hiding from LPDR military attack, and those returnees from Thailand. We expect no less from you-- our U.S. Ambassador to Laos.
We are looking forward to working with you to end these ongoing atrocities by the LPDR regime in Laos," Vaughn Vang, concluded.
Contact: Anna Jones
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