Two Lao nationals have been arrested upon returning home from Thailand where they were working, while a third has vanished, because they criticized the Lao government while abroad, their friends and relatives said.
Somphone Phimmasone, 29, his girlfriend Lod Thammavong, 30, and Soukane Chaithad, 32, returned to Laos in February to renew their passports, the sources said.
Police arrested Somphone and Lod at her home at Navatai village of Nongbok district in central Laos’ Khammouane province on March 5, said a relative of the couple, who declined to be named.
“At first, the police told us they had been arrested for possession of drugs, but two weeks later the policeman in charge of the jail informed us that they had been arrested for political campaigning,” he said. “[He] told us not to get involved if we didn’t want to get into trouble.”
I began meeting you only after they said you were gone, a victim of enforced disappearance.
I first met you in an email sent by my colleague at Focus on the Global South, Joseph Purugganan exactly one year ago, when I first joined the organization as a budding activist. He mentioned of the dramatic rise in the killing of environmentalists all over the world and the need to programmatically address the issue of extrajudicial killings and criminalization of dissent, as part of the Sombath Initiative and Focus’ broader Power and Democracy program. I was intrigued by your life so I began digging deeper and learning more about your ideas and ideals.
We are similar, in a way, in our preference of working in the field with the people rather than writing about it.
I met you for the second time, in Malaysia, in the ASEAN Civil Society Conference/ASEAN People’s Forum (ACSC/APF). People were talking about you. People spoke of how you pioneered the use of Participatory Rural Appraisal in Laos and how you helped the Lao people to come up with solutions by themselves. Continue reading “Dear Sombath…from Galileo”
BANGKOK: — The widow of missing Muslim lawyer Somchai Nilapaichit has launched a signature collection campaign to demand the revival of the enforced disappearance case of her husband.
Mrs Angkana Nilapaichit, a member of the human rights committee of the Law Council of Thailand, told Post Today Online that the campaign through the social media, www.change.org, which started a month ago has already collected about 17,000 signatures against her demand of at least 25,000 signatures.
Once the required signatures are collected, she said she would submit a petition accompanied by the list of signatures to Justice Minister Paiboon Kumchaya and six other persons to demand the revival of Mr Somchai’s case in an independent and transparent manner.
Somchai has disappeared without any traces about 12 years ago while he served as a defence lawyers for some of the suspected southern separatists. All the police officers charged with involvement in the lawyer’s disappearance have been acquitted.
Mrs Angkana said, besides the demand for the revival of the case, the signature campaign was intended to create public awareness about human rights, rights to safety and protection from enforced disappearance.
Laos is a country that is usually described in accordance with one of two narratives.
The first portrays a Buddhist Shangri-La — the ‘real,’ ‘hidden,’ and ‘untouched’ Indochina dreamed of in Western backpacker fantasies — while the second depicts a highly impoverished country in desperate need of foreign aid and technical assistance.
Both depictions have some merit. Laos is rich in Buddhist history and it is predominantly an agrarian-based society where the average life expectancy is just 66 years and Gross National Income per capita is under $5,000. But there is much more to Laos than Buddhism and poverty.
Sombath Somphone, a prominent civil society member who was abducted outside a police post in the capital, Vientiane, in December 2012, remained disappeared with no progress in his case. In March, a former military general heading a non-profit organization – widely believed to be a government proxy – made a failed attempt to have Sombath Somphone’s name removed from the agenda of the ASEAN People’s Forum event. No progress was made in the case of Sompawn Khantisouk, an entrepreneur who was active on conservation issues. He remained disappeared since being abducted by men believed to be police in 2007.
From Amnesty International’s 2015/2016 report. The full report, which also raises concerns about the freedoms of expression and association, is available here.
Enforced disappearance is when a person is secretly taken by the government, or by others with the knowledge and support of state authorities. The government then denies any role in the abduction, as well as knowledge about what happened, or where the person might be. The result is that the person is denied all legal rights and protection.
Enforced disappearance is often considered one of the most serious and brutal crimes for several reasons:
The family and colleagues of the victim often have very few legal options. There is usually little evidence, or the authorities refuse to investigate or seek evidence, because they do not acknowledge that a crime was committed.
Not only does the victim’s family have no knowledge of what happened to their loved one, they are often afraid to speak out or pursue the case because they fear it may have further negative effects. Because of this, the family is also a victim of the crime.
Enforced disappearance also creates significant fear among friends, colleagues and peer groups. Because they usually do not know the specific reason the person was abducted, they become afraid to act. In this way, enforced disappearance can also be a means of repression against wider society.
At the same time, enforced disappearance can result in both complicity and complacency among the broader population. Because there is little evidence and no legal case, others can pretend the crime did not occur and that the situation is normal.
“The phenomenon of enforced disappearances […] is the worst of all violations of human rights. It is certainly a challenge to the very concept of human rights, denial of the right for humans to have an existence, an identity. Enforced disappearance transforms humans into non-beings. It is the ultimate corruption, abuse of power that allows those responsible to transform law and order into something ridiculous and to commit heinous crimes.”
Niall MacDermot, Secretary General of the International Commission of Jurists (1970-1990)
Introduction
“Enforced disappearance” is one of the worst violations of human rights. A “disappeared” person is entirely at the mercy of his or her captors, with no access to legal protection.
The family and friends of a disappeared person endure tremendous suffering not knowing whether the disappeared person is alive or deceased, or whether they will ever know their fate or whereabouts.
“Sombath’s work touched the lives of many in Laos and across the ASEAN community. We hope Secretary Kerry raises his case directly with the Prime Minister. That kind of high-level discussion would be hard for the Lao authorities to ignore,” Santiago said.
JAKARTA – US Secretary of State John Kerry should raise concerns about the state of democracy and human rights in Laos and Cambodia when he meets with leaders in Vientiane and Phnom Penh this week, ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) said today.
“Secretary Kerry should make it clear that the United States views respect for human rights as a core component of bilateral relations, inseparable from trade and security concerns that too often overshadow it. He should seek firm, public commitments from Lao and Cambodian leaders on this front,” said APHR Chairperson and Malaysian MP Charles Santiago. Continue reading “Parliamentarians urge Secretary Kerry to raise human rights concerns on visit to Laos and Cambodia”
Nothing will upset an Asian government more than comparisons with the heinous dictatorships and juntas of South America in the 1980s. Gun-toting soldiers sporting Ray-Ban aviators on deserted city streets, backed by tanks and a sinister security apparatus, is one common image.
The forced disappearance – a euphemism for state-sponsored kidnappings – of critics, political opposition or just plain irritants is another. Nor are those disappearances uncommon in Southeast Asia.
The disappearance of agriculturalist and reformer Sombath Somphone in Laos, labor protester Khem Sophathin Cambodia and lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit in Thailand are three of the more notable examples in a region mired in human rights abuses.
Now that practice seems to have been extended to nearby Hong Kong, where residents have for years believed that such dreadful things could never happen in the former British colony.
Five people who are linked to a Chinese book shop in the well-known Causeway Bay shopping precinct have gone missing amid speculation they have been taken by mainland authorities. One is a British citizen another is Swedish-Chinese.
Pro-democracy lawmaker Albert Ho recently said that he believed publisher Lee Bo had been taken against his will into the Chinese mainland because he planned a book about the love affairs of China’s President Xi Jinping and his exploits while working in the provinces.
“It’s a forced disappearance … all those who have disappeared are related to the Causeway Bay bookshop and this bookshop was famous, not only for the sale, but also for the publication and circulation of a series of sensitive books,” he said in a recent television interview.
The alleged kidnappings have also earned comparisons with North Korean tactics, although there the abductions took place outside the country. In Beijing, the government has said little, which is not unlike the response from authorities in countries south of the Chinese border.
The third anniversary marking the disappearance of Sombath Somphone was held in December, while the first anniversary of the disappearance of Khem Sophath – who was last seen with a gunshot wound to the chest – was held earlier this week.
Government friendly and state-controlled media ignored both anniversaries while journalists in both countries confided privately that local reporters were pressured by their editors not to run commemoration stories.
“We were ready to go out and do this story on Khem Sophath,” one Cambodian reporter told this journalist. “Then the editor walks in and yells wait, wait, no, no, we’re not doing that story.”
That came just two weeks after a Thai court upheld the acquittal of five police officers accused of abducting Somchai Neelapaijit, a prominent human rights lawyer who vanished in 2004 while he was defending suspected Islamic militants who had accused authorities of torturing them. Thailand is now controlled by the military.
Over the years, forced disappearances have, sadly, not been uncommon in Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and the Philippines. Nor was mainland China an exception. If instigated by the government, then such practices do amount to one form of state-sponsored terrorism.
Hong Kong, however, was different. It had emerged as a vanguard for model behavior in a difficult part of the world during the 1990s and first decade of this century despite political dabbling by the communists in China and a fetish for pleasing Beijing among the ruling powers in the territory.
If allegations of kidnapping prove correct, then Beijing has failed in its obligation to ensure the security of its citizens and resentment among Hong Kongers will only build. And Xi will thoroughly deserve comparisons with the nastier leaders of Southeast Asia and those dictatorships of the 1980s in South America.
Not prepared to play the victim even after the recent ruling on the disappearance of her lawyer husband, Angkhana Neelapaijit is dedicating her life to helping others who suffer abuse of rights…
Angkhana was known in security quarters as a daring, stubborn and outspoken widow who has always reminded the world about Thailand’s chronic impunity. She strongly supported the wife of the missing Karen land rights activist Porlajee “Billy” Rakchongcharoen on her quest for justice. Angkhana is also a key member of The Sombath Initiative that is looking into the disappearance of Laos’ senior community development figure Sombath Somphone.