Par Bruno Philip (Bangkok, correspondant en Asie du Sud-Est)
Sombath Somphone a disparu depuis le 15 décembre 2012. | Gilles Sabrie (International Herald Tribune)
C’est une petite guérite en planches de bois, verte et blanche, au coin d’une grand-rue de l’est de Vientiane, à la périphérie d’un quartier diplomatique de la capitale du Laos. Des policiers y surveillent la circulation. C’est ici, presque en face de l’ambassade de l’Inde, que Sombath Somphone, 62 ans, a disparu il y aura bientôt un an : depuis, plus personne n’a revu cette figure de la société civile, promoteur du développement rural et défenseur des droits des paysans.
C’est le soir du 15 décembre 2012. Sombath Somphone, qui suit la voiture de son épouse dans sa Jeep, est arrêté par un agent de la circulation pour un contrôle d’identité. Le policier lui parle à travers la portière. Puis Sombath Somphone descend et se dirige vers la guérite. Un peu plus tard arrive un homme à moto. Il monte dans la Jeep, prend le volant et démarre. Un pick-up de couleur blanche se gare au bord de la route, feux de détresse allumés, et prend à son bord deux hommes, dont Sombath Somphone. On ne le reverra plus. Continue reading “Sombath Somphone, le disparu de Vientiane”
Anne-Sophie Gindroz, ancienne directrice d’Helvetas au Laos, décrit le climat effrayant qui règne dans ce pays qui brade ses ressources aux compagnies étrangères et fait taire toute contestation.
En décembre 2012, Sombath Somphone suivait sa femme au volant de sa voiture pour rentrer chez eux à Vientiane, la capitale du Laos. Sur l’avenue de Thadeua, il fut tiré hors de son véhicule par des agents de police. Ni sa femme ni aucun de ses proches ne revit Sombath après cet épisode.
De nombreux gouvernements, des personnalités internationales, des parlementaires et organisations de la société civile ont cherché en vain à savoir où il se trouvait. Et la cause du droit à la terre des populations rurales au Laos, que Sombath s’efforçait de faire reconnaître, reste toujours largement ignorée
Des compagnies multinationales se ruent sur le Laos et d’autres pays dits «sous-développés» pour y acheter des terres ou les droits sur les ressources que leurs sous-sols recèlent auprès de gouvernements locaux, régionaux et nationaux. Dans de nombreux pays, les terres ont un immense potentiel pour des opérations minières, agricoles et forestières. Du bois d’arbres plusieurs fois centenaires est pratiquement bradé par des gouvernements de pays pauvres au nom du développement économique. Continue reading “Ce que cache la disparition d’un militant des droits de l’homme au Laos”
BANGKOK (October 28) — ASEAN Parliamentarians today called on a European Parliament delegation to Vientiane to persevere with collective efforts to secure the safe return of Lao civil society activist Sombath Somphone, the victim of an enforced disappearance last year.
CCTV footage shows Sombath was last seen with local police in the Lao capital Vientiane on December 15, 2012. He has not been seen since and ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) has expressed both publicly and privately over the past 10 months the perceived failure of the Lao authorities in their sincerity to properly investigate his disappearance.
Bangkok (dpa) – European parliamentarians on a visit to Vientiane Monday vowed to keep diplomatic pressure on Laos to solve the case of missing activist Sombath Somphone.
“We did not get convincing answers to any of our questions,” said Werner Langen, chairman of the European Parliament‘s delegation for South-East Asia. “We will keep the pressure on.”
Langen and three other European parliamentarians met Lao legislators and ministers including Phongsavath Boupha, head of Laos‘ national steering committee on human rights, to discuss the case of Sombath who went missing in a Vientiane suburb on December 15 after being stopped at a police checkpoint.
CCTV footage showed Sombath being pushed into a pickup truck that was driven off. He has not been seen since.
The Communist regime has denied knowledge of the incident or Sombath‘s whereabouts.
“We made it clear that if the case is not solved they will lose credibility in the EU,” Langen said.
Human rights groups pressured visiting European parliamentarians in Laos Monday to demand answers about missing activist Sombath Somphone.
“The EU should use all its leverage to ensure Sombath’s safe return,” said a joint letter from Amnesty International, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Federation Internationale des Ligues de droits de l’homme and Human Rights Watch.
The civil rights activist has not been seen since December 15, when he was detained at a police checkpoint in Vientiane, and CCTV footage captured images of him being forced into a truck and driven away.
A number of international groups have called on European parliamentarians visiting Laos to maintain pressure to secure the release of Sombath Somphone. In part, the letter reads:
In line with the EU’s commitments to promote human rights through all its external actions, we call on you during your upcoming EP delegation visit to urge the Lao government to:
Ensure the safe and immediate return of Sombath Somphone.
Answer the many outstanding questions around Sombath’s disappearance and establish an independent commission to investigate the case.
Fully investigate the enforced disappearance of Sombath Somphone in a timely and transparent manner, appropriately prosecuting those responsible.
Address repression of civil and political rights, including freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly in Laos and ensure an enabling environment for civil society and human rights defenders.
Until Sombath Somphone is back safely with his family, his case will not be forgotten and calls for his return will persist.
A European parliamentary delegation at a press conference in Bangkok on Lao activist Sombath Somphone’s disappearance, Aug. 28, 2013.
A European parliamentary delegation has expressed dissatisfaction with the Lao government’s explanation over the disappearance of prominent local activist Sombath Somphone, who was last seen 10 months ago being stopped in his vehicle at a police checkpoint in the Lao capital Vientiane.
The second European Parliamentary visit to Laos this year came as rights groups urged sustained pressure on Vientiane to secure the safe return of Sombath, a rights campaigner who had been critical of the government’s policies for the poor.
The four-member parliamentary group, led by the chairman of the European Parliament’s delegation for South-East Asia, Werner Langen, met with a number of Lao officials and ministers on Monday, including Phongsavath Boupha, head of Laos’ national steering committee on human rights.
Langen told RFA’s Lao Service that his delegation had held “frank” discussions on the Sombath case with Lao officials, but that little progress had been made.
“The ministers said, ‘We don’t have an answer for where Sombath is now’,” Langen said.
A secretive ruling clique and murky land-grabs spell trouble for a poor country.
THE Airbus A320 was ordered by Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, but somehow ended up as the prized possession of Lao Airlines. From a window seat flying above Laos a visitor gets a sense of the state’s weaknesses. Deforestation stretches all the way to the Chinese border. It is so recent and so extreme that scientists from Sweden’s Lund university picked Laos as a testing ground for a new method of monitoring economic activity from space. By combining night-time satellite images with land-use data, they can estimate, with surprising accuracy, changes in agricultural and non-agricultural activity. For Laos, it also means monitoring the impact of Chinese and Vietnamese cash from space.
On the ground in the northern province of Oudomxay, most jeeps roaming the deforested valley bear Chinese and Vietnamese number plates. Four of the province’s districts are among the fastest-growing rural economies in the country, according to the researchers in Sweden. (Laos’s obscurantist government publishes little information about anything.) Investment is flowing into agriculture, typically rubber plantations, market gardening and other cash crops, much of it destined for the huge Chinese population to the north. The side-effects include a loss of forests and biodiversity, serious soil erosion and growing numbers of people in this multi-ethnic province being pushed off their land. Continue reading “The future of Laos: A bleak landscape”
Vientiane: The wife of prominent social activist Sombath Somphone has made a desperate plea to Lao authorities, declaring he will leave the country and retire quietly with her if returned safely after being abducted in the Lao capital 10 months ago.
Ng Shui Meng, who has been married to the award-winning Sombath for 30 years, says she does not want to see any more damage done to Laos’ image and credibility over the abduction which human rights groups describe as a state-sponsored forced disappearance.
Every day since Sombath disappeared has been “an eternity of waiting, wavering between hope and despair.”
“All I want is only the safe return of Sombath,” Ms Shui Meng, a Singaporean, told Fairfax Media.
Radio France Internationale: 23 October 2013 French President François Hollande (L) with Laotian President Choummaly Sayasone at the Elysée Palace. AFP/Bertrand Guay
French President François Hollande met Laos’s leader Choummaly Sayasone in Paris on Tuesday in the first visit by a Loatian president since the country’s independence from France some 60 years ago. The visit is distinctly low-profile as several NGOs demand news of disappeared Laotian activist Sombath Somphone.
The Laotian president was due to meet business leaders at the headquarters of bosses’ union Medef on Wednesday and business was the central theme of the Elysée Palace’s statement after the two presidents met.
It called for an increase in French companies’ investments in Laos and announced the signing of a feasibility study into the extension of a hydroelectricty project on the Nam Theun river, a tributary of the Mekong.
Some of Laos’s hydroelectric projects on the Mekong have caused rows with neighbouring countries because of their possible effects downstream but an experts’ report says that measures have been taken to mitigate the enviromental effects of the Nam Theun project.
No press conference was organised for either Tuesday’s or Wednesday’s meetings, leading to speculation that the authorities wished to spare Sayasone the embarrassment of questions over the whereabouts of anti-corruption campaigner Somphone.
Human rights groups have called on France to press the Laotian leader for information about the activist, the 63-year-old head of the Participatory Development Center who disappeared in December 2012 and was last caught on CCTV cameras near a police station in the company of two unidentified individuals.
Europe and France should be concerned about his whereabouts, Debby Stothard of the International Federation of Human Rights told RFI as the two presidents met.
In February the European parliament expressed concern over his fate and the slow progress of the investigation into his disappearance.
A French Foreign Affairs Ministry statement on Monday called on the Laotian authorities to do everythgin possible to investigate the case but there was no indication that Hollande raised the subject with Sayasone in the presidential statement.
The two presidents paid tribute to the victims of the plane crash that cost 49 lives earlier this month.
