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Laos: Failed resistance just a bad
dream
By Richard S
Ehrlich
BANGKOK - Americans supporting
anti-communist Hmong guerrillas in Laos should realize
they lost the US Central Intelligence Agency's support
in 1975 and that the abandoned stragglers must be
rescued because they cannot fight, say two European
journalists who were jailed and deported after meeting
the rebels.
"This community of about 600 people
were mostly women and children - 60 percent of them
children - and maybe 40 guys with guns - but very old
guns, no ammunition - and totally unable to fight as
guerrillas," said Belgian photojournalist Thierry
Falise, describing a group of Hmong rebels trapped in a
jungle in northern Laos.
"Their situation was
very pathetic. It is definitely much more a humanitarian
issue than a military issue," the Bangkok-based Falise
said.
"The Hmong guerrillas are totally unable
to defy the Lao government," he said.
An
American Lutheran pastor, Reverend Naw Karl Mua, Falise
and Bangkok-based French cameraman Vincent Reynaud were
freed in Laos on Wednesday after being sentenced to 15
years in jail for meeting the rag-tag Hmong rebels. The
three men insisted they were innocent after being
arrested on June 4 near the rebels' camp in the Plain of
Jars region of northern Laos.
They were
sentenced on June 30 on flimsy charges of involvement in
the death of a Lao security officer, who was killed
during a jungle skirmish. Their 15-year sentences
sparked an international outcry among human-rights
organizations, foreign correspondents, diplomats and
others demanding their freedom (see Furor over arrest of journalists, pastor
in Laos, June 26).
Falise, speaking at the
Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand on Thursday
alongside Reynaud, said they journeyed to Laos to report
about the guerrillas but discovered that the motley band
of desperate Hmong were barely able to survive hunger
and disease. During the ill-fated trip, the reporters
and the pastor had to eat "roots" because food was
scarce, he said.
Mua, the freed Hmong-American
pastor from St Paul, Minnesota, also arrived in Bangkok
after being deported from Laos with the journalists but
was not immediately available for comment.
The
US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) financed, trained
and armed Hmong and other minority tribes in Laos during
the 1960s and '70s against Lao communists and North
Vietnamese. In 1975, when the United States lost its
wars in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, thousands of Hmong
crossed the Mekong River to refugee camps in Thailand.
Some later found sanctuary in the US, France, Australia
and elsewhere.
Today, US-based anti-communist
Hmong groups demand the overthrow of the regime in Laos
and claim that the guerrillas could win their fight for
democracy if supporters contributed more money to their
cause.
"Some Hmong-Americans, a lot of them are
sincere and they still think the Hmong so-called
guerrillas can take over some part of land," Falise
said.
Falise, in remarks echoed by his colleague
Reynaud, said that dream is a farce.
"The point
now is to try to help those people - the 600 - and I
understand there are five or six other groups scattered
in Laos and they are in the same situation," Falise
said. "They have been waiting for years and years,
hidden in the jungle. A lot of them are still waiting
for the Americans to come back.
"It is like a
dream, even though most of them were not alive when the
Americans were there almost 30 years ago. But their
fathers were there, their grandfathers were there, they
spoke to the Americans, and so they have been educated
in that [anti-communist] talk for so many years that
they also believe there are those Americans coming to
save them," Falise said.
To end the misery, the
US and Laotian governments should agree to allow the
Hmong remnants to move to the United States so they can
establish a new life, the Belgian photojournalist said.
Many Hmong in communist Laos are able to live
relatively normal lives, but several thousand diehard
fighters wandering the jungle are unable or unwilling to
be assimilated.
If they are not rescued, they
will slowly die of hunger, disease, injuries and
neglect, the journalists said.
(Copyright 2003
Richard S Ehrlich.)
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