By Joshua Kurlantzick
Hmong-government violence appears to have picked up again.
Despite its reputation for placidity, and its popularity as a backpacker tourist destination, Laos remains one of the most repressive and politically opaque countries in the world. It is consistently ranked as “not free” by Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World Index, and unlike neighboring Thailand, Cambodia, or even Myanmar during junta rule, Laos has no organized opposition party. In fact, even small public protests in Laos are quickly suppressed, their leaders going missing for years afterward. The state media is highly uninformative, and there are few other outlets for information. (Radio Free Asia–Laos is an exception.) Strange incidents in Laos often remain unresolved. Last winter, a Canadian traveler was apparently stabbed to death in Vientiane’s international airport; Laos’ government initially insisted he committed suicide, but multiple news reports suggest murder was more likely. The case remains unsolved. In 2007, the co-owner of one of northeast Laos’ best-known guesthouses mysteriously disappeared, an apparent kidnapping. Some aid workers in Laos suggested he had been kidnapped for angering local officials for criticizing their management of land and the environment. His case remains unsolved and he has not returned. Last year, Radio Free Asia reported that several Lao citizens who used social media to document alleged land grabbing and harassment by local officials were detained, sometimes for months at a time.
Laos’ political repression receives little international attention. Only the 2012 disappearance of its best-known civil society activist, Sombath Somphone, has received much global notice. In particular, reported repression of the country’s ethnic minority groups is met with international silence. The country has no charismatic opposition leader, and the somnolent quality of everyday life in much of the country tends to give some outsiders the impression that not much is going on in Laos.
In such a repressive environment where there is no means to express dissent peacefully, violence sometimes flares against Laotian officials and government targets, particularly in Hmong-dominated areas in upcountry Laos. Indeed, for decades after communist forces won the country’s civil war and took over government in 1975, bands of Hmong fighters continued to hold out in parts of Laos, fighting a guerilla war with little food and ancient weapons. (During the Vietnam War, the United States government provided military assistance, training, economic aid, and air support to the Hmong.) Reports of Hmong-government violence were, however, often impossible to confirm, since the areas of attacks are relatively remote and Laos is barely covered by most news organizations. When I worked as a journalist in Southeast Asia in the late 1990s and early 2000s, even alleged bombings that took place in Vientiane itself were frequently hard to confirm.
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