Tag: Laos’ Global Reputation

The Straights Times: 17 December 2103

By Nirmal Ghosh, Indochina Bureau Chief In Bangkok

It has been a year, but Ms Ng Shui Meng still momentarily tenses whenever the phone rings. Twelve months have passed, yet there is still no trace of or information on her husband Sombath Somphone, who disappeared in Laos on Dec 15 last year. The incident was recorded on a CCTV camera but to date remains unsolved.

Given that Mr Sombath, internationally recognised for his work with farming communities, was pulled over by police that evening, Laos is under pressure from foreign governments to give an explanation. On the first anniversary of the disappearance last Sunday, the civil society organisation Mr Sombath founded held its annual fair in Vientiane. If the practice continues, it will be an annual reminder of that fateful evening.

Hours later, a US State Department statement said Washington remained “deeply concerned over the fate of Sombath Somphone, one of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic’s most respected civil society figures, on the one-year anniversary of his abduction”.

“Sombath was abducted on the evening of Dec 15, 2012, from a Lao police checkpoint in Vientiane. This deplorable event was recorded on Lao government surveillance cameras,” the statement said. Continue reading “One year on, still no trace of prominent Lao”

The Diplomat: 17 December 2013

Scrutiny from human rights groups and charges from the ICC likely if officials don’t come clean.

Just over a year ago, community development worker Sombath Somphone was plucked from the streets of Vientiane by police. He has not been heard of since, despite overwhelming evidence linking his disappearance to the government and its dictatorial internal security apparatus.

But even the Laos government has its friends. One spin doctor went so far as to describe Sombath’s disappearance as a “piffling affair,” which somehow seemed like not so much of a big deal when compared with the extraordinary renditions of the United States.

And in rebuffing Human Rights Watch (HRW) the scribe of sorts described the Sombath issue as “like those poor Guantanamo-bound wretches.”

Comparing Sombath’s plight to people like Hambali – the mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombings which left more than 200 people dead and who apparently still resides in Gitmo – beggars belief. Continue reading “Missing Sombath Still Dogging Laos”

Radio Free Asia: 10 September 2013

by Viengsay Luangkhot

The kidnapping of 61 year-old Sombath Somphone, a prominent activist and the winner of the 2005 Magsaysay Award, has put the Lao government in an inextricable position.

A closed-circuit police video clip shows Sombath being stopped by traffic police in front of the Lao-German Technical College on Thadeua Road in Vientiane’s Sisattanak district at around 6:00 p.m. on Dec. 15, 2012, while he was driving home. The video clip shows Sombath come out of the car and walk to the police post.

A little while later, a man wearing a black windbreaker arrives in a motorcycle, runs into the post, and re-emerges soon after to drive away in Sombath’s car, apparently indicating that the man went into the post to get Sombath’s car keys. Not long after, a silver-bronze pickup truck stops in front of the police post with emergency lights on while two men escort Sombath onto the truck and leave.

Sombath has not been seen or heard from since.

Pictures on the video clip show clearly that Sombath was kidnapped from a police post with police officers in the post witnessing the act.

The police officers are suspected to have been involved in the kidnapping, though neither they nor the men who escorted Sombath to the pickup truck can be identified. Nor can the license plate of the truck be read, as the only video now available was taken by Sombath’s coworkers with their cell phone as they viewed the original video clip in the headquarters of the Vientiane traffic police on the morning of Dec. 17, 2012. Continue reading “Laos Has Made Its Bed and Now Has to Lie in It”