Soldier a prime suspect in killing of American couplePublished on January 21, 2006
During their investigation into the recent slaying of two Lao-American social activists, a special police task force zeroed in on a Thai military sergeant as a prime suspect.
The group of senior police officers headed by Major Aswin Kwang-muang, deputy commander of the Central Investigation Bureau, held a meeting with local police officers and US Embassy officials in Nong Khai to discuss the murder on Wednesday.
US citizens Anouvong Sethathi-rath and his wife Oulayvanh Set-hathirath, both of whom claimed descent from the kings of Lan Xang, were shot dead on Wednesday in a Buddhist monastery in the North-eastern province.
The couple arrived in Thailand the week before to attend a conference in neighbouring Udon Thani province to promote Lao identity and culture.
Witnesses said two men had walked into the monastery and executed the husband and wife at close range at about 10am as they were about to pray.
Police believe the gunmen were Thai nationals, one of whom may be a military officer with the rank of sergeant who had previously met a senior Lao military officer on the Lao side of the Mekong River. Police gave no further details about the identity of the suspected soldier but noted that political motives might have been behind the apparently targeted assassination of the couple.
Despite their claims, it seems the couple were not directly related to the Lan Xang White Parasol Dynasty, which reigned in Luang Prabang before the takeover of Laos by the Communist Pathet Lao forces in 1975. Anouvong, who lived in the US state of North Carolina under the name of Philip McRowan, said he was a descendant of Xay Sethathi-rath, who founded Vientiane. He moved to the US in 1985 from Cuba, where he was studying. His wife Oulayvanh, who went by the name of Ashley McRowan, said she had been born in Laos and moved to Nong Khai’s Sri Chiang Mai district when she was six years old before moving to North Carolina in 1984 to be with her brother.
Their associates told The Nation that the couple had been advocating a return of the monarchy to the communist-ruled country. Despite their monarchist leanings, they seemed to have maintained no close contacts with political movements or armed groups hoping to overthrow the government in Laos.
A Lao official, however, said that monarchist feelings and claims of royal descent were very sensitive issues politically in the country.
The couple are not the first Lao activists to have been killed in Thailand.
Several Lao dissidents have died in Thailand since late 2003, when Sisouk Sayaseng, the suspected leader of an attack on the Vang Tao checkpoint in Laos’s Champassak province in July 2000, was shot dead in Ubon Ratchathani.
Phra Uthai Thammasopit, an elderly Buddhist monk who was a former captain in the Laotian Royal Army, was shot dead in Bangkok last October following the death of many fellow royalist military officers who fled from Laos after the communist takeover of 1975. None of the cases has been solved.
Supalak Ganjanakhundee
The Nation