POLITICS-LAOS: Hmong ‘Insurgency’ Actually a Humanitarian Crisis

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - By Boonthan Sakanond

BANGKOK, Jul 17 2003 (IPS) - The month-long detention of two European journalists in Laos, the ensuing global outcry and their sudden release is emerging as a classic case study of how media, diplomacy and so-called ‘dissidence’ work in contemporary times.
   The ethnic Hmong ‘insurgents’ the journalists went to cover turned out to be a group of starving villagers desperate for help.

The month-long detention of two European journalists in Laos, the ensuing global outcry and their sudden release is emerging as a classic case study of how media, diplomacy and so-called ‘dissidence’ work in contemporary times.

The ethnic Hmong ‘insurgents’ the journalists went to cover turned out to be a group of starving villagers desperate for help.

After the arrest of the journalists, overseas ‘dissident’ groups of Hmong who publicly ‘condemned’ it secretly rejoiced at the publicity the episode brought to their campaign. Then, Western governments initially trying ‘diplomatic’ channels finally used old-fashioned methods of arm-twisting against the Lao government to secure their release.

”The real story of what happened and how it happened is fascinating but I don’t think anybody has the patience or time to listen to it,” Vincent Reynaud, the French journalist released from captivity, said in an interview with IPS.

Reynaud, a video cameraman and Thiery Falise, a Belgian photographer – both based in Bangkok – were arrested on Jun. 4 while returning from a trip to cover what was ostensibly an ethnic Hmong insurgency in north-eastern Laos.

Charged with complicity in the killing of a village guard by a Hmong tribesman during their trip, the two journalists and the pastor were first sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment in a show trial on Jun. 30 by a provincial Lao court.

Within a week however, all of them were released and deported from the country following intense pressure from the French, Belgian and U.S. governments.

Of immediate concern to both Reynaud and Falise is the plight of the Hmong ‘insurgents’ most of whom were old men, women and children with no food to eat – and the fate of two Hmong men who were arrested with them but are still languishing in jail.

”The first sight we saw when we reached the Hmong-controlled territory was old women digging the ground for roots to eat and starving, emaciated children. They need urgent help,” said Reynaud.

The two journalists and their interpreter reached the remote area after traveling through thick jungle for four days and nights with their Hmong escorts.

According to the journalists, the so-called Hmong insurgency in Laos consists of around 3,000 very poorly armed and completely isolated men, women and children spread over difficult terrain into four different groups.

Contrary to the claim made by Hmong exiles based in the United States and France that these groups are waging some ‘rebellion’ against the Lao government, they are really more in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, said the journalists.

”The overseas groups are using these poor people to fight a proxy battle with the Lao government and are not bothered about bringing about a solution that will help save them,” said Reynaud.

The United States in particular has a large overseas Hmong population numbering over 200,000, almost all of them exiles from Laos. Hmong rebels were hired by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the war in Vietnam in the sixties to fight communist North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao troops.

At their peak, more than 30,000 Hmong fought for the United States against the communists in what became known as the ‘Secret War’.

The Hmong continued their ‘insurgency’ after the communists took control in Laos in 1975. But in the eighties and nineties, they were reduced to small bands of men, women and children fighting for survival.

The Lao government refuses to use the term ‘insurgency’ to refer to these Hmong groups and prefers to call them ‘bandits’. The Hmong ‘bandits’ are often accused of carrying out random attacks on civilian targets and robberies, in which several people have died in past years.

”We will continue to campaign for the release of two Hmong men who were arrested with us and now face an uncertain fate in the abysmal Lao penal system,” said Reynaud.

During the month-long detention in a jail in the Lao capital Vientiane, the two journalists said they witnessed appalling living conditions and heard horrific stories of ill-treatment of prisoners.

But it is unlikely the journalists will get any help in this cause from their governments, which are relieved to be off the case now that their nationals have been released.

While the Lao government initially appeared to be taking a hard line against the arrested foreigners, it released them after the French – the country’s former colonisers – threatened them with the withdrawal of crucial foreign aid.

The 15-year sentence handed out to the two journalists and their interpreter is believed to have considerably embarrassed the French government, which initially had tried to bring about a smoothly negotiated settlement.

International media coverage of the episode also has dried up almost immediately after the release of the two European journalists and their U.S. interpreter.

While the media campaign for the release of the three foreigners has proved successful, there has been criticism of some of its aspects, mainly the hyping up of the case against the Lao government.

”Laos has been described in recent weeks as a ‘rogue state’, as a ‘Taliban regime’ in a U.S. Senate inquiry, as a state engaged in ‘ethnic cleansing’ against its Hmong minority. All of the above allegations are untrue,” wrote Grant Evans, a well-known scholar of Lao history writing in the ‘Bangkok Post’, an English language daily in Thailand.

While such allegations appealed to simple-minded senators from Texas, he said, ”this disturbing proliferation of White House-inspired ‘newspeak’ is now applied to Laos even by usually level-headed journalists”.

According to Evans, while many news reports on the Hmong inside Laos suggest that the government is engaged in an ethnically inspired campaign of discrimination against them, ”in fact, the Lao constitution and laws are more tolerant towards minorities than many of its neighbours”.

”(It is) more tolerant than Thailand, for example, which does not recognise many minorities as Thai citizens, whereas in Laos minority residents are considered Lao citizens,” he pointed out.

The Hmong are a highland people traditionally also found in places like China, Vietnam and Thailand.

”There is much which needs reform in Laos, not least its judicial system. And it needs a free press,” wrote Evans. ”But when the ‘free press’ outside is so cavalier in the way it reports Laos, then it sets a poor example for Laos, and sets back the cause of an open society here.”