Thread: Sombath Somphone: Laos urged to look into Magsaysay winner's disappearance

Thai govt 'obliged to find Lao lawyer' - The Nation

Thai govt 'obliged to find Lao lawyer'

Nuntida Puangthong,
Pakorn Puengnetr
The Nation January 10, 2013 1:00 am


25 days since Sombath's disappearance, seminar demands Bangkok get involved

Not only Laotian authorities, but also Thailand must take responsibility for the disappearance of Lao activist and Magsaysay Award winner Sombath Somphone, who is widely believed by civic groups to have been abducted for his role in fighting a Thai-Lao development project on the Mekong River.

Panellists at a seminar held on the 25th day after Sombath's disappearance called on the Laotian government to take responsibility, alleging that Lao police were clearly seen taking part in the "enforced disappearance".

Closed-circuit television footage shows Sombath being stopped by police at a checkpoint before being taken away by a group of unknown men in a pickup truck in the evening of December 15.

The 2005 Magsaysay Award winner has championed sustainable development in the landlocked country for decades. His work to preserve the natural environment went against mega projects including the Thai-invested Xayaburi Dam, the panellists said.

The Thai government should show some responsibility over Sombath's disappearance and play a role in the search for him, as Thailand directly benefits from major infrastructure projects in Laos, said Prof Surichai Wankaew, director of the Peace and Conflicts Study Centre at Chulalongkorn University.

People must show to Asean governments that they have power, and Thai activists should step up campaigns on human-rights issue following Sombath's disappearance, and nine years after Thai lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit's kidnapping, he said.

Asean countries should try to strike a balance in development and not focus just on economic stability. They should also maintain the culture and livelihoods of local people, the professor said.

"The Asean Economic Community is not just about creating a single market; it will affect a lot of people's lives," Surichai said.

"The AEC means more than trading. If Asean nations do not value the lives of other people, what will the pride of the community be? So all of us must return to pressure our own governments on what they think about this issue."

Dr Nirand Pithakwatchara, a member of the National Human Rights Commission, said the Thai government should inform the Asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights about its progress in protecting people from enforced disappearance.

The significance of Sombath's case was not limited to an individual, because his campaign to protect human rights won him the Magsaysay Award, and he had become a symbol of human rights in Asean, he said.

"What happened to Sombath challenges the human rights issue in the region. Sombath worked to create love and care and social justice," he said.

Angkhana Neelapaijit, president of the Justice for Peace Foundation, whose activist-lawyer husband Somchai has been missing since 2004, said Sombath's disappearance was apparently a warning from the Laotian government.

Vientiane wanted to send a message that it would not accept the participation of civil society, she said.

Asean members should be allowed to check human rights abuses among themselves, she said, noting that enforced disappearances would not stop if the practice were not criminalised.

Jon Ungphakorn, a former Bangkok senator, who received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for government service in 2005, the same year as Sombath, told the seminar that he and 52 Magsaysay Award recipients and officials had sent an open letter to the Laotian prime minister and Laotian government agencies asking them to investigate Sombath's disappearance.

Sombath's safety would depend on pressure from other Asean governments, as Vientiane would not listen to NGOs, Jon said.

Other Asean governments must express their uneasiness about Sombath's alleged enforced disappearance, he said.

Pablo Solon, a former Bolivian ambassador to the UN, said forced disappearance was a crime against humanity and people should campaign against this crime. In Argentina, people rose up in street protests after ten of thousands went missing, he said.

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Speculation over disappearance - The Nation

Speculation over disappearance

The Nation January 10, 2013 1:00 am

When Laotian Magsaysay award winner Sombath Somphone, 60, went missing on December 15 while driving home from his office, there was a lot of speculation over the motive for his disappearance.

Lao authorities in Vientiane have said he might have been abducted by unknown men due to personal or business conflicts.

Sources said yesterday that his work and roles in the country might have humiliated some state agencies or particular individuals in the state agencies who stood to lose something from his activism. He was warned against doing high-profile development work, which might threaten the interests of people in power, the sources said.

Sombath is the founder and retired director of the Participatory Development Training Centre in Laos, which promotes sustainable development. He is a highly respected educator whose accomplishments were recognised by the presentation of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, one of Asia's top civil awards, in 2005.

Schooled in the United States, Sombath developed wide connections with international aid agencies and civic groups in the region. His Singaporean wife, Ng Shui Meng, was a former UN staffer.

Sombath was also instrumental as a co-organiser of the highly successful Asia-Europe People's Forum 9, held prior to the Ninth Asia-Europe Summit Meeting in Vientiane last October.

In the people's meeting, residents from the central province of Savannakhet brought up the running disputes they had with authorities over land in their province. Many Lao officials at the meeting felt bitter and lost face as local people raised problems of the development project on such an international stage, a source said.

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Disappearance of Laos activist Sombath Somphone proof that Asean human rights is toothless | Bangkok Post: news

Lao case a 'slap in face' for Asean

• Published: 10/01/2013 at 12:00 AM
• Newspaper section: News

Human rights activists say the disappearance of Lao community advocate Sombath Somphone is a slap in the face for the Asean Human Rights Declaration and the regional bloc's human rights agency.


Sombath: Disappeared after cops stopped him

Niran Pitakwatchara, a human rights commissioner, said the Thai government should encourage discussions about the case within the Asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR).

"The forced disappearance of outstanding human rights defender Sombath should be of great concern for not only Laos but for Asean as well," Dr Niran said.

The commissioner was one of the panelists at a roundtable discussion on the topic of "What Does Sombath Somphone's Abduction Signal to Asean?", held in Bangkok yesterday.

Jon Ungphakorn, a member of the National Human Rights Commission's subcommittee on civil and political rights, said similar circumstances elsewhere showed that human rights defenders could be "disappeared" by the powers-that-be.

He said this sent a signal to the people that challenging a society's rigid tenets would not be allowed.

"Sombath's disappearance is intended to suppress or threaten the emergence of civil society in that country," he said.

Mr Jon called for the dismantling of Asean's founding principle of non-interference which the bloc's members cling to like a mantra.

"The practice of non-intervention should be abolished, at least on the issues of the human rights of the Asean people, as it is does not concern issues within borders, but of a community which proclaims to be caring and sharing," Mr Jon said.

Mr Sombath, 60, who had been honoured for his work to reduce poverty and promote education in Laos through a training centre he founded, has been missing since Dec 15 last year when he left his office in Vientiane to drive home to his wife, but never arrived.

Closed-circuit camera footage from that night, which relatives have posted online, shows him being stopped by traffic police.

However, Vientiane's ambassador to Geneva Yong Chanthalangsy told UN Special Procedures officials _ independent investigators assigned by the UN Human Rights Council _ that they had been misinformed about the case and that traffic police had not taken Sombath into custody during the stop.

Pablo Solon, whose brother was among a large number of people who disappeared in Bolivia during the 1980s, said Asean people must not accept such weak explanations by the Lao officials.

"The state authorities are obliged to give an explanation _ who were the traffic police involved and why did they stop the activist. The state security in that country must be held responsible for this obvious abduction," said Mr Solon, executive director of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South.

Angkhana Neelapaijit, director of the Justice for Peace Foundation, said unless enforced disappearance is stipulated as a crime, the region will only be making an empty boast in its claims to be a community that cares for human rights.

"The cases of Sombath and my husband are similar, a threatening signal to those defending and fighting for the rights of others," she said.

Ms Angkhana's husband Somchai, a Thai-Muslim lawyer and human rights activist, disappeared in 2004.

Activists fear Thai return of Hmong rebel to Laos
03/26/2013

BANGKOK—A U.S. admonition to Laos over its shaky human rights record has spurred efforts to halt the possible deportation from Thailand of a former ethnic leader to the authoritarian Southeast Asian nation. Rights activists said Tuesday that former ethnic Hmong rebel Moua Toua Ter was being held at an immigration detention center in Bangkok, while rights activists made representations on his behalf to the Thai government. They fear he faces persecution if repatriated.

Concern over his fate came after Washington took Laos to task for failing to account for the disappearance of a prominent social activist.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Laos' failure to provide significant information about the case of award-winning activist Sombath Somphone raises questions about the government's commitment to the rule of law.

mercurynews.com

From ‘Somchai’ to ‘Sombath’: the Inconvenient Truth for Victims of the Disappeared.
Mon, 01/04/2013

On the evening of Saturday, December 15 last year, Sombath Somphone was seen in CCTV footage being taken away by a man in plain clothes in a white truck, after he had been stopped by police officers in Thadue Road, Vientiane, Laos.

Nine years ago, on March 12, 53-year-old Somchai Neelapaijit was abducted by five police officers in daylight in the Ramkhamhaeng area of Bangkok, Thailand.

What they had in common, besides never being seen again since then, is that they both are citizens working to promote the rights and freedom of others. Sombath worked in education and agricultural development for over two decades, while Somchai worked as a human rights lawyer, especially with those involved in security-related cases in Thailand’s troubled Deep South.

“It’s been almost ten years since Somchai has disappeared, yet we’ve barely seen any progress despite the fact that the DSI (Department of Special Investigation) has taken this up as special case,” said Angkhana Neelapaijit, the wife of Somchai, during a public seminar entitled ‘Human Rights in ASEAN: Lessons Learned from the Disappearance of Sombath Somphone and Somchai Neelaphaijit.’

The event on March 28, jointly organized by the Somchai Neelapaijit Memorial Fund and the Justice for Peace Foundation among other organizations, was to commemorate 100 days of Sombath’s disappearance as well as the ninth anniversary of Somchai’s.

Angkhana said since the domestic justice system does not function properly in finding the truth, she hopes that international pressure and mechanisms would be able to protect human rights.

However, she questions whether the common people would get any benefit from the soon-to-be ASEAN community.

Ng Shui Meng, wife of Sombath Somphone, expressed similar doubts. Even though ASEAN member countries recently adopted an ASEAN Human Rights Charter and established the ASEAN Inter-governmental Commission for Human Rights (AICHR), she said in reality those mechanisms rarely come into play.

“It was only after Sombath’s disappearance that I understood how toothless these regional and international human rights instruments and institutions are, and how empty are the states’ claims of respect of rights, the rule of law and due process,” said Shui Meng in a statement for the seminar.

“I also now come to realize how helpless individual citizens can be and how few recourses they have to seek justice.”

After Sombath disappeared in December, the case received worldwide attention with the European Union and United States expressing concern, while the Lao government denied any involvement, suggesting that Sombath’s disappearance may be due to personal or business conflicts.

The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance reports that since 1980, there have been 78 cases of Enforced Disappearance in Thailand, seven in Laos, eight in Burma, 165 in Indonesia, 782 in the Philippines, two in Cambodia and two in Malaysia. Civil society however believes the actual numbers are higher.

Angkhana said the Working Group has several times requested the Thai government to allow a fact-finding mission to be conducted in Thailand but the government has refused.

But aside from affecting the families’ victims, the disappearance also has a chilling effect on those working in civil society.

Withoon Permpongsacharoen, Director of the Mekong Energy and Ecology Network, who has worked closely with Sombath, said Sombath’s abduction has scared people who work in non-governmental development organizations. After Sombath disappeared, some decided to turn their back on development work in Laos and never returned.

He believes that the Lao government is involved in Sombath’s disappearance, due to his role in hosting the Asia-Europe People’s Forum in November last year which displayed open criticism of Lao economic development plans.

“I think the Lao government underestimates what has happened. They thought they could do it and things would go silent, but on the contrary, the case has drawn quite intensive international attention,” he said.

prachatai.com

Related : https://teakdoor.com/thailand-and-asi...abduction.html (Somchai Neelaphaijit - 3 years since abduction!)

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

Sombath was also instrumental as a co-organiser of the highly successful Asia-Europe People's Forum 9, held prior to the Ninth Asia-Europe Summit Meeting in Vientiane last October.

In the people's meeting, residents from the central province of Savannakhet brought up the running disputes they had with authorities over land in their province. Many Lao officials at the meeting felt bitter and lost face as local people raised problems of the development project on such an international stage, a source said.

The most likely culprits.....those who lost face at the meeting.

Open letter on Sombath Somphone
Andrew Walker
4 June 2013



Statement of Concerned Australian and Australia-Based Scholars on Sombath Somphone

Today, 42 concerned Australian and Australia-based scholars sent an open letter to Senator the Hon Bob Carr, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, calling for further action regarding the December 15, 2012 disappearance of Lao civil society leader Sombath Somphone in Vientiane, Lao PDR.

The letter is available here.

asiapacific.anu.edu.au

Lack of Progress on Missing Lao Activist’s Case ‘Troubling’
Reported by RFA’s Lao Service.
Translated by Viengsay Luangkhot.
Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.
2013-06-10


A 2005 photo of Sombath Somphone in the Philippines.
AFP/Somphone family

Nearly six months after the disappearance of prominent Lao activist Sombath Somphone, police have reported little progress on his case amid concerns for his safety by fellow activists.

Laos’s Ministry of Public Security said at a briefing on Friday that police were still carrying out investigations to locate Sombath since he was declared missing in December last year, including coordinating with international agencies.

But activists, who have raised concerns that Sombath may have been forcibly disappeared and called for a thorough investigation into his case, said they were disappointed no new developments were revealed.

“We expected some progress, some leads,” a representative from a nongovernmental organization in Thailand said Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“We haven’t seen any new developments. It seems that was all they could say.”

Officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs contacted by RFA’s Lao Service after the briefing refused to comment on Sombath’s case.

Anti-poverty campaigner Sombath, 61, was last seen in video footage stopping at a police checkpoint in the Laotian capital Vientiane, prompting international concern that his disappearance could be tied to his human rights work.

Lao authorities have denied detaining Sombath and suggested he could have been kidnapped over a personal or business conflict.

Still 'focused' on case

Police said at the briefing that the Ministry of Public Security committee tasked with investigating Sombath’s case “remains focused on the issue.”

“The committee in charge of the case will continue to investigate and collect information, check and verify the information sources and collect information from individuals and organizations from within the country and abroad in accordance with its mandates and duties,” deputy police director Phengsavanh Tiphavongxay said in a statement issued after the briefing.

International police cooperation agency Interpol issued a missing persons alert for Sombath in April after Lao authorities reported the case to them, the statement said.

Since then, Lao authorities have provided Sombath’s passport and ID card details in response to requests from Japan, India, and France, and have exchanged information on him with South Korean, U.S., and Spanish authorities, according to the statement.

Police met with Sombath’s wife, Singapore citizen Ng Shui Meng, in April to discuss the case, it added.

Ng has expressed regret over the lack of vital information on her husband’s case, at one point urging authorities to allow her to see him if he was in official custody.

Investigation raises 'troubling questions'

Last week, a group of more than 40 Australian scholars called on their country’s leaders to pressure Laos to “do everything in its power to account for Sombath’s disappearance,” raising concerns about the “lack of proper process” in the case.

“The official investigation into his case by the Lao authorities has to date been perfunctory at best, and has raised troubling questions,” the scholars said in the letter addressed to Australia’s foreign ministry.

They also called on Laos to speak up in support of civil society groups in order to counter the “serious intimidation” provoked by Sombath’s disappearance.

The former director of the Participatory Development Training Centre (PADETC) in Vientiane, Sombath was the 2005 recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, considered Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

CCTV video released by police of the traffic stop Sombath made on the night he disappeared showed him being taken away from the police post by two unidentified individuals.

rfa.org

Lao Activist Sombath May Not Be Alive: Diplomats
Reported by RFA's Lao Service.
Translated by Viengsay Luangkhot.
Written in English by Parameswaran Ponnudurai.
2013-07-09

A 2005 photo of Sombath Somphone in the Philippines.
AFP/Somphone family

More than six months after his disappearance, some foreign diplomats in Vientiane think it is very unlikely that respected Lao civil society leader Sombath Somphone is still alive.

Sombath was driving on the outskirts of the Lao capital Vientiane on Dec. 15 last year when he was stopped in his vehicle by police and then transferred into another vehicle, as surveillance video from that day showed. No one has seen him since.

Based on private discussions with officials from the Lao government, ruling Communist Party and the military, as well as other well-connected sources in the country, several foreign diplomats told RFA's Lao Service that the 60-year-old community worker's chances of being alive are very slim.

Lao authorities have reported little or no progress in their investigations since Sombath's disappearance on the night of Dec. 15, 2012, when police-recorded surveillance video showed him being stopped at a police post.

Amid the impasse, many in the foreign diplomatic community in Laos think it is most unlikely that Sombath is still alive, one diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The diplomat indicated that Sombath may have been killed by government-linked groups, saying that one "highly placed source" told him bluntly that Sombath was "finished" and "planted," using jargon to exemplify that he may have been murdered and buried in an undisclosed location.

Lack of trust

Another diplomat quoted an unnamed member of the Lao Communist Party's central committee as saying that the party leadership did not trust Sombath, who has been campaigning to upgrade youth training, improve the rights of the poor rural population and to protect the environment.

His attempt to plant the seeds of “freedom” in Lao youth minds was perceived as a clear challenge to the Communist Party leadership, which has ruled Laos with an iron fist since 1975, the diplomat said, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Lao authorities have also been concerned over his role in organizing the Asia Europe People's Forum—where various "sensitive" issues such as corruption, land rights and environmental threats were discussed—ahead of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit that took place in Vientiane in November 2012, he said.

One particular concern of the authorities was that Sombath had allegedly written a letter to Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi inviting her to attend the forum, he said.

Aung San Suu Kyi did not attend the forum.

The Communist Party’s suspicion was further inflamed by Sombath’s close contact with Thai and international environmentalist groups fiercely opposed to the construction of dams on the Mekong River and which had organized demonstration against the Xayaburi Dam project during the ASEM Summit, the second diplomat said.

The diplomat felt that the Lao government’s current strategy is to "drag its feet" over the Sombath's case, hoping that the issue will fade away like all past arbitrary arrests, imprisonments, and forced disappearances in the country.

International community's concerns

The United Nations, the United States and the European Parliament have all raised concerns about Sombath's disappearance while human rights groups expressed fears he may have been abducted by security groups linked to the government.

London-based Amnesty International and U.S.-based Human Rights Watch had said that Sombath was a victim of "enforced disappearance"—defined under international law as the arrest or detention of a person by state officials or their agents followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty, or to reveal the person’s fate or whereabouts.

“Based on the evidence, the most plausible conclusion is that Sombath Somphone is a victim of an enforced disappearance, for which Lao officials are responsible,” Rupert Abbott, Amnesty International’s Researcher on Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam said recently.

“The fact that Sombath was taken from a police post in the center of Laos’ capital city, and that the police there did nothing to resist, raises very serious concerns,” he said.

Human Rights Watch had said that the authorities in Laos have "failed to seriously investigate or credibly explain the enforced disappearance" of Sombath.

It said there was no indication that the Lao authorities had made any follow-up inquiries into the actions recorded on the police security video.

“After six months, the Lao government’s failure to explain the abduction of a prominent social activist at a police checkpoint or account for his whereabouts raises the gravest concerns for his safety,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

Sombath was the former director of the Participatory Development Training Centre (PADETC), a nongovernmental organization he founded in 1996 to promote education, training, and sustainable development.

He was the recipient of the 2005 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership for his work in the fields of education and development across Asia.

rfa.org

Letter from Sombath Somphone's wife on the International Day of the Disappeared
Fri, 30/08/2013

Today (August 30) is the International Day of the Disappeared. Shui Meng has shared the following letter with friends and colleagues to call attention to this terrible practice.

A number of groups and media organisations are doing research on the number and nature of Enforced Disappearances in Laos. If you have any verifiable, documentedevidence, please share it.

Dear All,

August 30 marks the International Day of the Disappeared. In many Asian countries, there are activities marking the day to show solidarity with the victims of Enforced Disappearances.

Although Laos is a signatory to the UN Convention Against Enforced Disappearances, and many other human rights conventions and protocols, and despite receiving substantial assistance from development partners for awareness and capacity building on HR issues, there is little awareness or even recognition that Enforced Disappearance is an HR issue in Laos.

In fact, in HR terms Enforced Disappearance is considered the “Mother of HR Violations” because a disappeared person is a “non-person,” and until the person’s whereabouts and proof of life or otherwise are known, the family is left in limbo; left waiting without any possibility of “closure”; left hanging between hope and despair. Nobody, except those who have experienced such violations, can even describe the agony and trauma they face every minute of the day, and outsiders can never understand those feelings and emotions.

I write this not because I am venting my feelings, but to urge you all, as development practitioners and HR advocates, to do more about raising awareness of the issue of disappearances in the HR context of Laos.

There are many cases of disappearances in Laos, more than are admitted, because the family members of the victims are too afraid to speak or reach out for help. Recently, I wanted to reach out regarding one case which was reported to the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, but was told that the family wants it to remain confidential. Such is the scale of fear, and that is why the perpetrators in Laos can continue to act with impunity and know that they will face little or no consequences.

I have spent my entire working life working on development in Laos and elsewhere to improve the lives and rights of the poor and disenfranchised, and I have been very proud of our mission. So, I urge you all, my development colleagues, to take a firmer and more forthright stand on the issue of disappearances with your Lao partners at the national and at the local levels. I at least have a voice, please be the voice and conscience of those Lao people who are voiceless and afraid.

Yours sincerely, Shui Meng

Source: Letter from Shui Meng on the International Day of the Disappeared

prachatai.com

Laos: Anniversary of ‘Disappearance’ Demands Action
December 16, 2013

Government Should Disclose Whereabouts, Account for Sombath Somphone


Sombath Somphone, a social activist, was last seen in Vientiane, the capital, nearly one year ago. There is strong evidence that he was forcibly disappeared by Laotian authorities.
© 2013 Stephen Sautter

One year since Sombath Somphone ‘disappeared,’ the Lao government clearly hopes the world will just forget about what happened to one of its most prominent citizens. Foreign donors to the Lao government should make Sombath’s enforced disappearance a priority until he can return home.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director

(Bangkok) – The Lao government should immediately disclose the fate of prominent social activist Sombath Somphone, who was apprehended at a police checkpoint in Vientiane one year ago. The official investigation of his enforced disappearance on December 15, 2012 was inadequate, and the government has yet to offer a credible explanation of Sombath’s whereabouts.

“One year since Sombath Somphone ‘disappeared,’ the Lao government clearly hopes the world will just forget about what happened to one of its most prominent citizens,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Foreign donors to the Lao government should make Sombath’s enforced disappearance a priority until he can return home.”

shows police stopping Sombath’s jeep at 6:03 p.m. on December 15, and unidentified men taking him into the Thadeua police post. Shortly after, an unidentified motorcyclist stopped at the police post and drove off with Sombath’s jeep, leaving his own motorcycle by the roadside. A few minutes later, a truck with flashing lights stopped at the police post. Two people got out of the truck, took Sombath into the vehicle, then drove off.

Lao authorities have repeatedly denied offers of technical assistance from governments around the world, including support for a detailed analysis of the video tape of Sombath being taken into custody.

Efforts by two European Parliament delegations, Vientiane-based diplomats, and visiting foreign ministry officials to raise Sombath’s case have failed to receive any substantive response from the government, Human Rights Watch said.

Shui Meng, Sombath’s wife, told journalists in Bangkok that “a wall of silence has fallen in Vientiane and the rest of Laos.”

Sombath is the founder and former director of the Participatory Development Training Centre in Laos. He is widely respected in the field of education and development both in Laos and across Asia. As a result of his work, Sombath received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, one of Asia’s top honors, in 2005.

Laos has signed, but not ratified, the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance. Enforced disappearances are defined under international law as the arrest or detention of a person by state officials or their agents followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty, or to reveal the person’s fate or whereabouts.

Enforced disappearances violate a range of fundamental human rights protected under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Laos is a party, including prohibitions against arbitrary arrest and detention; torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment; and extrajudicial execution.

“The Lao government needs to recognize that demands for Sombath’s return will not go away,” Robertson said. “The first anniversary of Sombath’s disappearance brings renewed urgency to uncover the truth and secure his freedom.”

hrw.org

Laos Human Rights Abuses 'Serious,' But Mostly Hidden From View
Reported by RFA’s Lao Service.
Translated by Bounchanh Mouangkham.
Written in English with additional reporting by Richard Finney.
2014-02-19


Rice farmers blocking a bulldozer from entering their land in a screen grab from an RFA video, Jan. 17, 2014.
RFA

The one-party Communist government of Laos is committing “serious” human rights abuses which go largely unreported due to tight political controls, rights groups say, following a report that the country has become the most repressive state in the region.

Laos has been under sharper focus by rights groups since popular civil society leader Sombath Somphone vanished after being stopped in his vehicle at a police checkpoint in the capital Vientiane on Dec. 15, 2012.

The rights groups say there have been many abuses apart from the case of Sombath, who they suspect may have been abducted by government-linked organizations

“The situation in Laos is very serious,” Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division of New York-based Human Rights Watch, told RFA's Lao Service.

“The Lao government uses its power as a one-party state to effectively control political expression in the country in a way that clearly violates various international human rights treaties.”

“It is still a very dictatorial, rights-repressing government,” Robertson said.

Economic opening

Despite an accelerated economic opening following Laos’s accession last year to membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Lao government still tightly controls the country’s “political space,” said Sarah Cook, Freedom House senior research associate for East Asia.

“The examples of China and Vietnam demonstrate how once countries join the WTO, or host big international events for which they have loosened controls slightly, the authoritarian regimes actually act more aggressively—especially in terms of crushing dissent.”

“So we’ll have to see what happens in Laos next year,” Cook said.

All media in Laos are controlled by the state, Robertson said, adding,“You don’t hear so much about the abuses that take place in Laos. Many things are hidden.”

Lao citizens are now “very scared” following Sombath's disappearance, Robertson said.

“People we speak to in Laos feel intimidated. They feel that with the disappearance of such a prominent member of Lao civil society, that means the government could take anyone.”

“They could act against anyone,” he added.

“People can’t discuss politics in Laos,” a Lao citizen said, speaking recently to RFA on condition of anonymity.

“For example, if the government issues regulations, we can’t talk about it. If we don’t like something we can’t protest. If you hold a conference without permission, you will be arrested.”

“You can’t hold a rally. If you do, you will be accused of causing civil unrest, and they will arrest you,” he said.'

'Most repressive'?

Laos has now replaced formerly military-ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma, as “the most repressive [regime] in the region,” the Bangkok Post said in a Jan. 29 editorial.

The Lao government has failed to address the disappearance of Sombath Somphone, the Post said, adding, “His disappearance is an obvious warning to anyone who might think of challenging the Vientiane regime.”

Concerns over which regime may be “worst” or “second-worst” mean little to victims of government abuse, though, Robertson said.

“A human-rights abuse is a human-rights abuse.”

“This government, when it is displeased with someone, when it is going after a particular human-rights defender, can be as vicious and as rights-abusing as any government in the region,” though, he said.

“And that certainly includes even the Burmese military government of the recent past,” which was accused of blatant rights abuses during its nearly five-decade rule.

rfa.org

Disappeared Lao Civil Society Leader’s Mother ‘Still Waiting for Him to Return’
Reported by RFA’s Lao Service.
Translated by Bounchanh Mouangkham.
Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.
2014-02-27


Ng Shui Meng at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand in Bangkok, Dec. 11, 2013.
RFA

A year and two months since prominent Lao civil society leader Sombath Somphone went missing in Vientiane, his family is still puzzled over why he disappeared and his ailing mother is still waiting for him to come home, his wife said Thursday.

“His mother is now 86 years old and ill,” Sombath’s wife Ng Shui Meng told RFA’s Lao Service Wednesday in Australia, where she spoke to students at the University of Sydney about his case.

“She is crying and waiting for her son to return,” she said.

“I am asking the Lao government and whoever is merciful to bring him home safely; that is my hope.”

The 61-year-old NGO leader has been missing since Dec. 15, 2012, when he was stopped in his vehicle at a police checkpoint in Vientiane. He was then transferred into another vehicle, according to police surveillance video, and no one has seen him since.

Lao officials say they are investigating the case but have offered little information on his whereabouts, prompting human rights groups to suspect that he may have been abducted by government-linked groups.

Family left wondering

Ng said she did not know of anything Sombath—who founded and ran a community education and youth training center in Vientiane, the Participatory Development Training Centre (PADETC)—might have done to anger government officials, saying he had always obtained official permission for his work.

“Whatever project he worked on, he always had to get permission from the government beforehand—first from the central government, then at the provincial, district, and village level,” she said.

When Sombath had gone to visit rural villages to train farmers or young people, officials had gone with him, she said.

“Whichever project it was, there was a consultation. That’s why I don’t understand [why he went missing].”

Well-respected figure

Sombath was the recipient of the 2005 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership—Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize—for his work in the fields of education and development.

NGO leaders have said the disappearance of the well-respected community development worker has rattled Laos’s activist community.

Ng, a Singaporean national and community development worker herself who has lived in Laos since the 1980s, has lobbied foreign governments to pressure the Lao authorities to fully and speedily investigate the case.

Singapore and the U.S. have joined in the appeal, with the EU parliament passing a resolution last month to “clarify the state of the investigation” into his whereabouts and “answer the many outstanding questions around Sombath’s disappearance.”

“I ask whoever talks to the Lao government to urge it to do everything it can to find Sombath and bring him home safely, bring him back to his family,” Ng said.

rfa.org

The Mystery of Sombath Somphone Still Resonates in Laos

The disappearance of Sombath Somphone remains one of the most enduring and heartbreaking mysteries of modern Laos as the abduction of the world-recognized rural development activist at a police checkpoint four years ago remains unsolved.

“As the fourth anniversary of Sombath’s disappearance approaches, my heart becomes heavier by the day,” his wife Shui Meng Ng told RFA’s Lao Service on Tuesday. “I never expected that I would still have no news of Sombath after so long.”

Video footage show’s Sombath’s Jeep being stopped at a police checkpoint on the evening of Dec. 15, 2012. In the video Sombath is herded into a white truck and taken away, and a man dressed in white returns and drives off in his Jeep.

Soon after he was kidnapped, police promised to investigate, but Lao authorities soon backtracked, saying they could no longer confirm whether the man in the video footage was actually Sombath.

Despite repeated promises of an investigation, the Lao government remains stubbornly clueless about his disappearance.

No trace of the man or his vehicle has ever been found, but Shui Meng Ng and other supporters know that someone, somewhere in Laos knows what happened on that busy road in downtown Vientiane on that night four years ago.

‘Someone must know where he is!’

“The Lao Government has promised an investigation, but there are still no answers,” she said. “Someone must know where he is!”

Shui Ming and other supporters say the Lao government doesn’t want to solve the mystery.

“Laos is too small not to be able to find Sombath, if the police investigators really do their work,” Shui Ming Ng said.

Sombath is well known figure in Laos and around the world for his decades of work on behalf of farmers and sustainable agricultural practices. He was the

recipient of the U.N.’s Human Resource Development Award for empowering the rural poor in Laos and the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership.

He pioneered the use of participatory rural appraisal (PRA) techniques in Laos. PRA aims to incorporate the knowledge and opinions of rural people in the planning and management of development projects. It is a methodology that requires policy-makers to learn about rural life and the environment from the people who live in project areas.

Sombath was generally apolitical, but PRA works from the bottom up, instead of from the top down. Pushing the PRA likely put Sombath on a collision course with Lao’s communist government, whose hallmark is central planning.

Just before his abduction Sombath challenged the massive land deals the government negotiated that left thousands of rural Laos homeless with little compensation. The deals sparked rare popular protests in Laos, where political speech is tightly controlled.

The seizure of land for development—often without due process or fair compensation for displaced residents— is a major cause of protests in authoritarian Asian countries like Laos.

Fear and cover-up

The lack of progress, or of evidence that there is any kind of actual investigation into the abduction indicates that the Lao government is covering up his disappearance, said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch Asia division.

“The government of Laos is responsible,” Robertson said. “So far this has all been a cover-up. We believe they know the answers, and we believe we just have to figure out how to persuade them to reveal them.”

Sombath’s disappearance and the reasons behind it remain a mystery, but it has had a chilling effect on development workers inside the country.

“A human-rights violation occurring in one place is threatening everywhere,” said a civil society organization (CSO) official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Since he was abducted, development workers in Laos feel afraid and are restricted in working on development projects,” the official added.

Lao officials declined to talk to RFA about the abduction, but the government issued a statement to state media outlets on International Human Rights Day saying “the political, economic, social, cultural and family rights of the people have been assured and enshrined in the constitution, laws and regulations of Laos.”

While the statement didn’t mention Sombath, it at least paid lip service to some of his underlying goals.

“The government is also striving to make Laos a state ruled by law by 2020 to create conditions for the Lao multiethnic people to enjoy their basic rights in line with the constitution and laws, along with pursuing regional and international obligations on human rights that Laos has committed to,” the statement reads.

International pressure and hope

While the abduction has incubated fear and caused pain, Sombath supporters and family still hold out hope.

About 70 people marked the anniversary of Sombath’s disappearance is help at Participatory Development Education Training Center (PADETC) on Thursday.

“The event includes a religious rite, and the participants listened to his biography and background to understand why uncle Sombath did development work, and there is an exhibition highlighting his achievements,” a family member, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told RFA.

Representatives from the embassies of the U.S., the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia, the EU, Singapore, and development agency staff, including the Mekong Youth from Thailand and the AFAD participated, family members said.

His wife and others hold out hope that international pressure can help dislodge information about Sombath’s disappearance.

“Every time the Lao government goes overseas, every time it meets with other governments, it needs to hear the words Sombath Somphone, until we ultimately get answers to what has happened to him,” Robertson explained.

Shui Meng Ng clings to that hope.

“The silence around his disappearance is frightening and also heart-breaking, but I will never give up” she said. “I will keep looking for answers and I believe the answers will come one of these days, and I just hope that the international community will continue to support my efforts and press the Lao Government to resolve the case quickly and let Sombath come home.”

The Mystery of Sombath Somphone Still Resonates in Laos

Sombath Somphone's Wife Calls Again on Laos to Explain His Disappearance


The wife of disappeared Lao rural development activist Sombath Somphone called on the government of Laos on Thursday to answer questions surrounding the fate of her husband, who vanished five years ago at a police checkpoint outside the Lao capital Vientiane.

Joined by a Malaysian parliamentarian and by rights group members at a press conference held in Bangkok, Ng Shui Meng said that repeated promises made by Lao authorities to investigate Sombath’s disappearance have led nowhere.

“I am asking the Lao government again to tell the truth,” Ng, a resident of Singapore, said a week before the fifth anniversary of Sombath’s forced disappearance, apparently at the hands of state-linked figures.

“I need to know whether he is alive or dead,” Ng said.

“It has been five years now since Sombath disappeared. I need answers, and I will keep asking these same questions until I get them,” she said.

Video footage shows Sombath’s Jeep being stopped at a police checkpoint on the evening of Dec. 15, 2012. In the video, Sombath is shown being forced into a white truck and taken away a short time after a man dressed in white arrives and drives off in his Jeep.

Though police later promised to investigate, Lao authorities soon backtracked, saying they could not confirm the identity of the man shown in the video and refusing offers of outside expert help to analyze the footage.

Before his abduction, Sombath had challenged massive land deals negotiated by the government that had left thousands of rural Lao villagers homeless with little paid in compensation. The deals had sparked rare popular protests in Laos, where political speech is tightly controlled.

Sombath’s decades of work on behalf of farmers and sustainable agricultural practices helped him win the U.N.’s Human Resource Development Award for empowering the rural poor in Laos, and later the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership.

Also speaking in Bangkok, former Swiss aid agency Helvetas director Sophie Gindroz told the conference that Sombath is not the only person to have disappeared in Laos after drawing authorities’ attention.

Others have vanished too, with many likely never to be seen again, said Gindroz, who was expelled from Laos in December 2012 after making statements critical of the Lao government.

http://www.rfa.org/english/news/laos/disappearance-12082017150901.html

Laotian police likely involved in Sombath abduction, new details suggest

ive years ago on the Friday before Christmas, distraught colleagues and friends of Sombath Somphone gathered at a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand after his disappearance in Laos’ capital, Vientiane. Last week, after another press conference at the FCCT on his case, we are nowhere closer to the truth than we were in 2012, but a new revelation adds weight to the widely held belief that the Laotian government was behind his disappearance.


A respected advocate for sustainable development and community empowerment, Sombath was driving home when he was stopped at a police checkpoint in Vientiane on the evening of December 15, 2012 – five years to the day before the publication of this article. Video footage showed him, moments after he got out of his car, being escorted by a group of unidentified individuals into a white van and driven away. An unidentified person then drove Sombath’s car away.


Last week, it was revealed that witnesses, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, saw Sombath in a police holding facility in Vientiane later that same evening, with his car parked nearby. In 2015, Ng Shui-Meng, Sombath’s wife, also obtained and publicly released additional closed-circuit TV footage showing Sombath’s car being driven toward the city center by an unknown individual. This suggests that the vehicle’s whereabouts could likely be traced.


Despite the fact that Sombath was taken from a police checkpoint, the Laotian government has given a blanket denial that it holds any knowledge of or was involved in his disappearance. Authorities have repeatedly assured diplomats, visiting parliamentarians, and the United Nations that they are investigating the case.



Sombath’s family has since sought updates from the police regarding their investigation but there has been minimal effort to keep his family apprised of the status of his case. In fact, Ng Shui-Meng has said that she had not received any further information from the police since they issued their last “investigation” report in 2013.


Instead of conducting a credible inquiry, officials have put forward insinuations of underground Thai mafia involvement or personal business disputes as reasons behind Sombath’s disappearance.


Laos has signed but not ratified the International Convention for the Protection of Persons from Enforced Disappearance. Under international law, enforced disappearance is defined as the arrest, detention, or abduction by a state agent or person acting on behalf of the state, followed by denial of the disappearance or concealment of the whereabouts of the disappeared. Notably, enforced disappearance is a continuing offense insofar as the whereabouts of the victim remains undisclosed.


Sombath’s disappearance is one of at least 13 known cases of enforced disappearances in Laos. Two Thai political activists in exile, Wuthipong Kachathamakul and Itthipol Sukpaen, have also been abducted while in Laos, in 2016 and 2017 respectively. In all cases the government has made minimal effort to determine their fate or whereabouts.


The government’s repeated failure to investigate Sombath’s disappearance effectively, and many others, is a breach of its obligation under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which stipulates that governments must provide an effective remedy for a violation of the right to life, liberty and security.


Laos is scheduled to be reviewed next year by a UN committee tasked with monitoring compliance with the ICCPR, which last month sent the government a list of preliminary questions, including one on the progress achieved in investigating the enforced disappearance of Sombath and 12 other cases.


The disappearance of Sombath, and indeed many others, is reflective of the increasingly regressive rights landscape in Laos. Although operating in a restrictive environment, civil society was developing further in the years before his disappearance. After Sombath’s abduction, a tangible climate of fear took hold among civil society, where colleagues and acquaintances were reluctant to even discuss his case.


Non-governmental organizations, development partners, and even international organizations began to self-censor. Several international organizations operating in Laos were invited to speak at last week’s press conference, but they all declined.


Peaceful critics have also been handled harshly by authorities. Most recently, in March this year three Lao migrant workers were sentenced to 12-20 years in prison for Facebook posts critical of the government and protesting outside the Laotian Embassy in Thailand.


Additionally, a new decree on non-profit associations went into force last month, placing onerous requirements on civic groups and giving the government sweeping power to control and even criminalize their activities, based on vague and broadly worded criteria, such as those outlawing actions that “destroy national, collective, and individual interests.” The decree makes it a “duty” for associations to follow the ruling Communist Party’s policy and guidance.


The Laotian government’s current approach to the Sombath case and civil society is inimical to the international consensus on the importance of a vibrant civil society and will ultimately undercut effectiveness of international development assistance. Whether and how the international community responds, beyond the occasional public statements of concern, remains to be seen.


The tragedy and impact of Sombath’s disappearance are manifold. First and foremost, it is the family whose suffering is further perpetuated in the denial of justice and truth. The agony of not knowing now, and likely never knowing, is impossible to quantify.


It is also a tragedy for Laos when one of its most respected citizens, who had worked tirelessly to improve the livelihoods of communities, vanished without a trace.

Laotian police likely involved in Sombath abduction, new details suggest | Asia Times

5th anniversary of Sombath Somphone disappearance

Submitted by editor on Thu, 07/12/2017 - 22:56

Five years after the abduction of the prominent, internationally acclaimed Lao development worker Sombath Somphone by Lao state agents, the Lao government has done very little to find the truth, experts said. Meanwhile, the enforced disappearance of Sombath has raised debates about the Lao government’s ambition to boost its economy through development projects, while it continues to suppress civil rights.

15 December 2017 marks five years since Sombath was last seen by his family. On 15 December 2012, CCTV at a police checkpoint in Vientiane recorded footage that shows that state agents abducted Sombath from the street. His jeep was stopped and then he was escorted into a truck. According to Shui Meng Ng, Sombath’s Singaporean wife, a witness later saw Sombath and his jeep in a police holding centre.

“Although five years have passed, every day I’m still haunted by the images of what happened to him,” said Shui Meng at a conference ‘Sombath Somphone 5 Years On’ held in Bangkok on 7 December 2017.

Shui Meng, who was the Deputy Representative for UNICEF in Laos between 2000 to 2004, said the Lao authorities have always denied responsibility and refused to give her any information. “For me, it’s almost like the response is one of denial, denial, denial until people are tired of the case. Then the case will be literally disappeared, and Sombath will be forever disappeared. But I keep saying I don’t care how long it will take. I will continue to ask, to struggle and to campaign for the return of Sombath. I see this as the need to have truth and justice. I cannot not have the truth.”

She added that the Lao police have summoned her through the Singaporean embassy several times.

“This signal is very clear; if somebody like Sombath can be disappeared, anyone can be disappeared,” said Sombath’s spouse. She said the enforced disappearance of Sombath created a climate of fear among civil society workers when even a non-violent, non-confrontational high-profile civil society worker like Sombath, who never intended to enter politics, can be disappeared, adding that the climate of fear among Lao civil society is still strong even after five years have passed.

Charles Santiago, a Malaysian MP and Chairperson of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR), said the enforced disappearance of Sombath is clearly a state-sanctioned action. As an APHR member, Santiago has made multiple visits to Laos since 2012 to inquire about Sombath’s disappearance, as well as the broader situation for civil society, but has never received a satisfactory answer from the Lao authorities.

Santiago said Sombath is one of the leaders of ASEAN -- a leading civil society worker of ASEAN. However, ASEAN failed to speak out for Sombath and has always avoided the issue, claiming its non-interference principle. “In this way, our dictators get away with murders with no accountability.”

In 2005, Sombath was awarded the Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership because of “his hopeful efforts to promote sustainable development in Laos by training and motivating its young people to become a generation of leaders".

Son of a poor farmer family, Sombath received a scholarship to study at the University of Hawaii where he received a bachelor's degree in Education and a master's degree in Agriculture. Sombath returned to Lao after the establishment of the one-party socialist regime and the end of the Vietnam War. Sombath’s work is mainly in the field of sustainable agriculture and development and education.

A lower-middle income economy, Laos is one of the fastest growing economies in Asia Pacific, with GDP growth averaging 7.8 percent over the last decade, through the exploitation of the country’s natural resources, mostly water, minerals and forests, according to the World Bank. In 2011, Laos announced its ambition to be the battery of a power-hungry Southeast Asia. Currently, the landlocked country has 16 hydroelectric dams. The construction of dams has led to environmental problems and forced resettlement which has affected the livelihood of local people. Without an independent media and freedom of expression, campaigns and discussions related to developmental problems are highly restricted. But Sombath challenged the government narrative of development.

“It strikes me that indeed Sombath was putting forward a different narrative. He was putting forward the people’s narratives--an alternative narrative, a narrative of hope, a narrative of empowerment, a narrative of sustainability and challenging Laotians, especially the young people, that it’s their country and it’s their land and they have to take control of their lands and environment,” said the Malaysian MP.

Anne-Sophie Gindroz, former Lao Country Director of Helvetas and author of "Laos, the Silent Repression" said she decided to author the book after the disappearance of Sombath to tell the dark side of the country to the world, especially to donor countries and aid agencies.

“I believe the aid agencies can do more than engaging in developmental projects. They have to also promote changes in democracy. It’s also important that Lao civil society is also empowered,” said Gindroz, “I think there is a fine line between cooperation and complicity.

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