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Critique
of United States Department of State Country Report on Human Rights
Ed McWilliams: Retired Foreign Service Officer with Experience in Laos
The State Department annual human rights report for Laos misrepresents
the extent of human rights abuse by the dictatorial Lao People's Democratic Republic regime. It
is particularly deficient in its coverage of the regime's continuing assault on the Hmong minority group, a minority
people which for over three decades has paid the price of support of US forces in the wars in Indochina. Their
assistance to US forces, particularly in rescuing downed US airmen, earned the enduring wrath of the Vietnamese-backed Communist
Lao who came to power in
Laos in 1975. The State Department annual report on human rights observance in Laos fails to note the extent of military assaults on Hmong communities in remote highland areas by the Lao military. It also ignores completely the role of allied forces from Vietnam which back and for all intents and purposes direct the Lao military operations. The report acknowledges the forced relocation of Hmong to infertile resettlement sites and notes that this has led to hunger and malnutrition in the relocated Hmong populations as well as disease and heightened mortality rates. The report acknowledges that such "relocation" sites are off limits to unfettered international monitoring but fails to draw the conclusions about the human rights consequences of holding these populations incommunicado. Moreover, the report fails to describe this forced relocation policy as ethnic cleansing, though such a characterization appears appropriate on the basis of evidence provided in the report. While documenting systematic abuse meted out to Hmong by the regime's security forces the report portrays Hmong "separatist and irredentist" goals as inspired by "societal discrimination," effectively absolving the regime of its genocidal assaults on the Hmong as a people. The report also underplays the extent of Lao and Vietnamese military campaigns against the Hmong by erroneously describing them as targeting only "residual, small scattered pockets of insurgents and their families in remote jungle areas." Can such limited operations explain the dangerous flight of thousands of Hmong from Laos across the Mekong into Thailand? For several years the State Department's human rights reporting on Laos has failed to adequately describe the regime's egregious assault on the Hmong. This failure has the effect of facilitating the State Department's efforts to forge closer ties to the LPDR regime as well as the Vietnamese regime notwithstanding their demonstrably poor human rights records. Inadequate reporting of the continuing and possibly intensifying military pressure on the Hmong in Laos also has the effect of deflecting concern over the fate of Hmong who have fled to Thailand but who there now face the threat of forced deportation back to Laos absent any international monitoring.  |
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