Dec. 3, 2006
 
Hmong Lao Crisis: Scenes of Horrifying Cruelty Reported from Laos
 
By Rebecca Sommer
Special to Huntington News Network
 
While the UNHCR country team in Bangkok issued a strong statement objecting to the Thai government’s forced deportation policy succeeded and the detained Hmong refugees deportation plans by Thailand were suspended, the very reason why most of the Hmong refugees are flooding into Thailand to this day is unfolding at an alarming pace inside the remote mountain areas of Laos.
 
Even as Thailand is classifying the Hmong Lao refugees conveniently as "economic" rather than political refugees, and has forced some of the unlucky ones back to Laos after they have crossed into Thailand, many thousand fled the truly shocking genocide policies of the Laotian government.
 
More than 8300 Hmong refugees are at present in White Waters makeshift shelters settlement, also known as Huay Nam Khao, even as official numbers by Thailand remain stable to the public at the 6,000 mark.
 
Not all refugees fled Laotian military training areas, and lived in hiding as internally displaced persons. Some are the leftovers of a previous refugee camp which was closed, and moved to Huay Nam Khao.
 
Others fled in fear of arbitrary arrests -- suspected of political crimes or disloyalty. And there are indeed Hmong refugees who lived integrated into Lao society, but left in search for better economic opportunities, or a chance to be resettled to the US to join relatives living there.
 
But a large portion of the refugees currently in Phetchabun fled Laos due to unbearable persecution and fear to be killed.
 
They fled a life of hunger and death all around them, hiding in voluntary isolation -- due to the circumstances -- in northern mountain areas of Laos, avoiding any contact with Laotian authorities and experienced ongoing military aggressions which started 31 years ago, after the Lao kingdom was overthrown and Laos became communist.
 
Many of those refugees are the direct descendants of parents or grandparents, who helped the United States to hinder the spread of communism during the Vietnam War. Others are villagers, who lived nearby in the military areas, and endured unprovoked military attacks, the burning of their crops and livestock, and mass execution, which forced survivors to flee into the jungle, were they sometimes merged with the already existing groups-in-hiding, or in some cases, survived on their own, former farmers without any knowledge how to survive from the forests wild roots and plants.
 
In Laos, recent reports confirm that the Laotian governments policy to eliminate the remaining Hmong groups in hiding continues at its high peak. Laos seems to be disturbed by the unresolved refugee issue, and growing international attention on their violations of international human rights standards. It appears that Laos believes the issue to be resolved by eradiating the remaining groups-in-hiding, and that is exactly what they are doing at present.
 
In at least three mountain areas, military battalions are reported to crush and eliminate Hmong groups hiding in fear and despair, most of them children and women.
 
Officially, Laos denies any problems, or military activities, foreigners and diplomats, including the UN system, are not allowed access to the very remote areas, were the Hmong groups live in hiding. Who is allowed to enter the military regions is carefully guided to showcase villages, and does not meet the Hmong groups, hiding and hoping for international intervention, a way out, a chance to survive. Someone to come and rescue them.
 
One wonders, why the Laotian communist government has only this one sided elimination approach -- instead of offering a humane solution by removing its military, cease fire, and leave the Hmong-in-hiding alone.
 
Years later, even the most distrusting Hmong groups would start to move to fertile farmlands, and start a normal live. Without being aggressively attacked, the Hmong groups would not need to hide, and defend themselves.
 
But instead, even those who surrender themselves to the Lao authorities are taken in the best case scenario to artificial resettlement villages, but often the leaders and men are either selected for imprisonment or executions, in other cases the groups who surrender are held in military camps, the women and girls gang-raped by numerous soldiers, the men most often tortured and killed, depending on the decisions and moods of the military.
 
There are reports of unbelievable cruelty, were Hmong surrendered, and women after being gang raped having their sexual parts cut off and displayed on stakes.
 
One story is vivid in my mind, told by a weeping mother. One day all by a sudden, the soldiers who had their base camp next to the village chopped her son’s and nephew’s fingers and toes off, used a knife to cut holes in their faces, tied a rope through it, and soldiers pulled them like animals on their knees on that rope through the village, with a gun poking at their behind, while blood flooding of the chopped body parts -- on each back a soldier riding and shouting ”That’s what happens to Hmong who are friends of America.”
 
The other son she found next day, his eyes cut out, his corpse full of stab wounds from a knife. Also she, as many others, fled back into the jungle. There, she lost a baby which got exposed to the chemical smoke which surrounded them after the rocket exploded. She helplessly watched her baby painfully dying in 3 hours.
 
Even so numerous reports of human rights violations against the Hmong-in-hiding are submitted on a nearly daily bases to the US state department, UN system and other relevant decision makers who could make a difference, the Hmong are still waiting for effective international intervention.
 
Even as numerous journalists visited various groups-in-hiding, and gave their eyewitness accounts to the UN system, the US state department and European Commission, the Hmong in the jungle of Laos are still attacked, bombed, tortured, gang-raped and massacred at this very moment, by Laotian and Vietnamese military.
 
Editor's Note: For More on this contining crisis, see the HNN archives.