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| Southeast Asia | |
| Four Americans arrested in Laos | |
| 2005-06-06 | |
| Four US nationals have been arrested in Laos for "liaising illegally" with ethnic Hmong people, a foreign ministry official said on Monday. The four were detained on Saturday and are now being questioned in Vientiane, said spokesman Yong Chanhthalansy. They were in Laos to try and ensure the safety of relatives of Hmong rebels surrendering to the Lao authorities. On Saturday, 170 women, children and old men surrendered after living in the jungle since the Vietnam War. According to the Nation newspaper in Thailand, the four detainees were Sia Cher Vang and Nhia Vang Yang - two Hmong Americans - as well as Californians Ed and Georgie Szendrey. All four are members of the Fact Finding Commission (FFC), a US-based organisation which has kept in touch with Hmong rebels still hiding in Laos. The Laos government spokesman told Reuters news agency that the four "were making trouble with the local authorities and local people, who reported that they were very unhappy". "So they have been placed under arrest and are now being interrogated in Vientiane," he said.
Ed Szendrey was in Laos to meet the first group of relatives to surrender. He said they were received warmly by local villagers in Xiang Khuang province. "The surrender went smoothly and food was provided by villagers at the request of the local government authorities," Mr Szendrey was quoted by the FFC as saying, before his arrest on Saturday. But Mr Yong disputed his account, saying the Americans' presence was interfering with a government programme to relocate jungle communities to improve their living conditions. Some members of the Hmong ethnic minority were recruited by the CIA to fight on behalf of the pro-American side during the Vietnam War. But when the Communist Pathet Lao took control of the country in 1975, the Hmong found themselves virtually abandoned by Washington. Many have since adapted to life in Communist Laos, while others have fled to Thailand and the US. But thousands of stayed in the Lao jungle, where they have faced growing hardship and continuing clashes with troops. | |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #8 Was one of them a lanky fellow from Massachusetts wearing a magic CIA hat and proclaiming that he never left Cambodian waters? |
| Posted by: Tibor 2005-06-06 18:42 |
| #7 Let's rememrber that genocides in South-East Asia were made possible by the kind of scum who works at BBC. I dream of someonbe managing to edit the tape before it is aired so people are reminded of the truth instad of what the BBC people want them to think. |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-06-06 11:57 |
| #6 We dealt the Hmong as good a deal as we could manage given the circs. I think most of the little buggers are already over here already. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2005-06-06 11:42 |
| #5 Although sympathetic to the Hmong, I have to say that the American FFC team apparently don't quite grasp the concept of national sovereignty. Whatever their opinions and loyalties, they need to grasp that when you travel to another country, and particularly when you travel to a designated "special military zone" within a country, you need to play by the local government's rules. The fcat that they - and the Hmong - are still living in 1975 - does not impose an obligation upon the present Lao government to subordinate its sovereignty to outsiders. |
| Posted by: Lone Ranger 2005-06-06 11:05 |
| #4 Any sign of Amnesty Internation or the ACLU? |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2005-06-06 11:02 |
| #3 Are Hmong and Montagarnards ethnically the same? SWOT. I have a magnificient Montagarard crossbow. Not one piece of metal on it. Shoots/shot a bamboo bolt with built in bamboo fletching, bamboo and other-stuff string, kinda of a weird grassy composite. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-06-06 10:36 |
| #2 Communist Laos said it had freed four American "troublemakers" on Monday after detaining them for illegal contacts with ethnic Hmong, the hill people who once manned a secret CIA-backed army during the Vietnam War. "We informed the U.S. consular people to pick them up and they were sent out via the Lao Friendship Bridge" into Thailand, Foreign Minister Somsavat Lengsavad told Reuters by telephone. Foreign Ministry spokesman Yong Chanhthalansy said earlier the four, members of a California-based group of Hmong sympathisers called the Fact Finding Commission, were detained on Saturday and were being interrogated in Vientiane. Bangkok's Nation newspaper said the last communication from the group was a satellite phone call its leader, Ed Szendrey, made around 50 km (30 miles) outside Vientiane near a major military checkpoint. |
| Posted by: Steve 2005-06-06 10:14 |
| #1 BBC: But when the Communist Pathet Lao took control of the country in 1975, the Hmong found themselves virtually abandoned by Washington. Actually, that's false, but what would you expect from the BBC? The US has accepted Montagnards for as refugees since the end of the Vietnam War. The problem is that they need to make it out of Laos to get refugee status. Since the Communist government will not allow them to leave, there is very little that we can do. That's what I like about the BBC - in every article involving Uncle Sam, you can expect a big lie hidden among seemingly innocuous facts. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-06-06 09:44 |