Since Sombath disappearance on the evening of 15 December 2012, my family and I have been touched by the great love, concern and support shown by friends, colleagues, international and regional agencies, civil society groups, government spokespersons, and the media who have joined hands to urge the Government of the Lao PDR to invest all their resources and capacities in their ongoing investigation of Sombath’s whereabouts, and to return him safely to me and to my family. We are most grateful and deeply touched by such show of solidarity for Sombath’s well-┬нтАР being.
While many articles and statements written about Sombath’s disappearance and urging his safe return have been helpful, some of the reports and comments also contain some factual errors or speculations. My greatest wish is the personal safety and well-┬нтАРbeing of my husband, Sombath, wherever he is. For this reason, I urge all well-тАРwishers not to stray away from the facts or to misrepresent Sombath or the nature of his work.
The facts as I know them
1. Sombath was last seen on 15 December 2012 driving in his jeep behind my vehicle. We were both going home to dinner. The last time I saw him from my rear view mirror was around 6:00 p.m. near the police post on KM 3 on Thadeua Road.
2. When he did not return home that night, we searched for Sombath’s whereabouts around the area where he was last seen and also searched the city’s hospital in the hope of finding Sombath, but to no avail.
3. On 16 December, we reported Sombath missing to the village, district and police authorities. Family searches were once more carried out in all the city’s hospitals, but there was no sign of Sombath.
4. On 17 December 2012, a request was made to the Vientiane Municipality Police Station to view the close circuit TV footages recorded by CCTV cameras near the police post where Sombath was last seen. The police officers on duty were very cooperative and allowed us to view the CCTV footages. From the TV footages, we saw Sombath stopped by the police at the police post. We saw Sombath get out of his jeep and enter into the police post.
5. Later a motorcyclist came by, parked the motorcycle near the jeep, running into the police post and later emerged and drove Sombath’s jeep away.
6. After a few minutes, a white truck with flashing lights stopped by the police post and two or three people were seen getting into the vehicle which drove off in a hurry.
7. The above facts were reported in my letter dated 17 December 2012 to the Chief of Cabinet of the Ministry of Public Security. On 18 December, I followed up by writing another letter to the Minister of Public Security, with a copy of the CCTV footage, and the report to the police. I urged the Minister to expedite the tracing of Sombath.
8. On 19 December 2012, the Lao Government issued a statement basically confirming that CCTV footage did show Sombath stopped at the police post for what it said was a routine check of vehicle documents. It also stated that later some people were seen going into a white truck but it could not confirm that Sombath was among them. It went on to say that Sombath could have been kidnapped presumably for reasons of personal conflict or business conflict. The statement ended by saying that the government would seriously investigate the whereabouts of Sombath and return him safely to his family.
9. On 26 December 2012, I was asked by the police to go to the Municipality Police Station, where I was asked to provide basic information about Sombath’s background, his family, his work, and my background and my work. My niece, my sister-┬нтАРin-┬нтАРlaw and and Sombath’s colleagues at PADETC were also questioned by the police.
10. On 04 January 2013, the Lao Ambassador based in Geneva, Mr Yong Chantalangsy, issued another statement once more stating that Sombath was not in police custody, and repeated that Sombath could have been kidnapped.
I have at no point refuted the government’s statement. In all my interviews with the press and in all my public statements, I have appealed to the Lao Government to expedite the investigation, find Sombath and to ensure his safety and quick return to me and the family. I also stated that Sombath has a medical condition that needs daily medication and that once returned to me, I would take Sombath to seek medical attention abroad until his full recuperation.
Sombath’s work
Over the last 30 years Sombath has worked openly to support the government’s policy of enhancing food security and improved livelihoods in the rural areas, promoting appropriate technologies in water and sanitation, improving teaching and learning in schools, and supporting human resource capacities, especially of young people, through training in leadership skills and community service. In recent years, he has worked closely with the Sangha to train monks to support the government’s drug reduction/rehabilitation programs and care and support for HIV infected/affected people.
In many recent articles and statements related to Sombath’s disappearance, he has sometimes been billed as a human rights defender or a social/ civil society activist. These terminologies do not accurately depict Sombath, the man or his work. It is true that Sombath through his projects has worked tirelessly to advance the well-┬нтАРbeing and support the building of human resource capacity of the rural poor. But, Sombath’s work has never been confrontational or antagonistic to government policy. Every project and every activity that Sombath has carried out, has been with the approval of the relevant government sector, and in cooperation with the local officials. This is because Sombath firmly believes that for any development program to be effective and have lasting impact, it needs to engage all sectors in Lao society -┬нтАР the government, mass organizations, NGOs, parents, teachers, youth, elders and villagers. This has been an abiding principle that has guided his work over the last 30 years.
Sombath’s development philosophy is that of promoting balanced and sustainable development. Sombath has never opposed economic development, but he urges that economic development be balanced with spiritual well-┬нтАР being, social improvement, and environmental and cultural protection. Sombath believes that by pursuing a balance between these 4 pillars of development is in the long run, the best way to achieving social harmony, economic stability, and environmental sustainability. This thinking is nothing new, and is reflected in the Lao Government’s own development agenda as the basic conditions needed to reduce poverty, achieve the Millennium Development Goals, and get Laos out of its Least Developed status by 2020.
I am afraid, vocal Burmese crowd, as opposed to grassrot and the ones likely to read even the burmese translation Are all “got at” by this “development mantra” in a rush to lead the Asia in rice export and getting 4G’s and all that, there seems no cure.
With support and blessing from all partiers active in and for Burma, we are now in a headlong rush to be a “Windup Girl Land”.
Chinese “businessmen” are masters at devastating the pristine natural environment and destroying the traditional social fabric of local people. They have proved that not just in Laos, Burma or Cambodia. Chinese “business interests” will soon be everywhere, not just in their own backyard (“global sino-periphery” is the word lol)
“Lao civil society…has been obliterated under a jackboot of fear.”
———–
“Learning from Lao”
Prachatai
Sun, 13/01/2013
Harrison George
This ASEAN Economic Community cannot come a moment too soon. If nothing else, it will give Thailand a chance to learn how to do things properly from the more advanced countries in ASEAN. Like Lao.
It is a common complaint that while Thailand is still bickering over the allocation of 3G mobile phone licences, Lao is ready with 4G. This is taken as a symbol of Thailand’s endemic inefficiency. But where does this inefficiency lie?
According to well-placed sources (as if anyone would cite poorly-placed sources), the superior efficiency of Lao resides in its streamlined system of bribery. Effectively, there is just one responsible agency, and anyone wanting a licence in Lao just pays them the one bribe and the deal is done.
In Thailand, there’s all sorts of people involved and you’ve no sooner paid off one than you find that there’s someone else expecting a backhander. And then another, and another who may already have taken money off your competitor. It is the time it takes to line up all the dots that makes Thailand lag behind its neighbour to the northeast.
So come on, corrupt officials, get your house in order. Surely it shouldn’t beyond you to figure out a one-stop bribery shop? The inefficiency of your corrupt practices is giving the country a bad name.
Then there is the recent enforced disappearance of Sombath Somphone in Vientiane. After the initial blunder in allowing CCTV footage to be copied onto the Internet, the response of the Vientiane authorities has been exemplary. Comparisons to the 2004 case of Somchai Neelapaijit in Thailand are not flattering to those agents of the Thai state whose duties include crimes of this sort.
First of all, the Lao choice of victim has been far superior to the Thai case. Somchai was snatched in Bangkok right after he had made it clear that he was going to name police names in the torture of Muslim suspects. Remove him from the scene, and who are you intimidating? Presumably anyone else thinking of publicly exposing criminals in uniform in the next few days. And there aren’t too many of those.
But people doing ordinary development work, protesting government development disasters or criticizing politicians’ greed and stupidity were not going to be scared off by this kind of threat. The high-ranking thugs may have protected themselves from scandal, but otherwise, life went on as before, except that now the disappearance of Somchai itself became another stick with which to beat the authorities.
But in Sombath, the Lao security goons have picked a winner. Soft-spoken, accommodating, and well-respected, Sombath posed no clear and present threat to the Lao powers-that-be other than by demonstrating that there was a superior way of doing things which the Lao government wasn’t really interested in. There is widespread speculation about what may have triggered his abduction, but it is only speculation. Nobody really knows.
So the effect has been properly paralyzing. Nobody in Lao can guess who will be next. Nobody knows where the line is that they should not cross. Some people have left the country; some have done a duck dive, flitting from safe house to safe house in the hope that the security forces are still a few steps behind. And everyone is keeping their mouths firmly shut. Lao civil society, always a poor scrawny thing, has been obliterated under a jackboot of fear.
All the shouting and screaming is being done outside the country and Thailand, for all its Computer-Related Crime Act and other censorship laws, could learn a thing or two from Lao about keeping its people in the dark of ignorance.
Then there has been the Lao government response to this external pressure (and by the way, the pressure from the Thai government over the Sombath case seems to have been so intense as to be invisible). The Lao Ministry of Foreign Affairs has simply brazened it out with bare-faced fairy tales.
He was stopped by traffic police for a normal check of his documents, they claim. The fact that a mysterious man on a motorcycle can drive his car away from outside the police post and that someone can escort him into a vehicle with flashing lights indicates, in the opinion of the Lao government, some kind of personal or business conflict.
Compare that with the virtual admission by then PM Thaksin that he knew what had happened to Somchai but wasn’t saying and the statement in parliament by then Deputy PM Chavalit that Somchai was dead. And the appearance of Somchai’s car at the bus station with all fingerprints so thoroughly wiped clean that it had the fingerprints of a police operation all over it.
No, when it comes to being properly criminal, there’s a lot to learn from Lao.
Tachilek is in Myanmar, a big different from Laos. A lot of money spend on this development at Houay Say, I already seen the hotel there and it is very nice 5 star.
I wondered if there was a catch somewhere, and I’m not surprised to learn that they try to rope these growers into their net so they have a captive market for their wares, pesticides, chemical fertilizers and the lot.
USAID of course arguably does more for US corporations such as the agribusiness than for the locals in the developing countries. There’s the example of food aid putting local farmers out of business and the populace becoming reliant on outside help before aid translates into trade. It’s a good ploy.
Senator Nick Xenaphon suggests that Australia maybe complicit in entrenching a corrupt elite through its free trade agreement in Malaysia:
The problem with Australia’s free-trade agreement with Malaysia, and the abject failure to link it to democratic reforms there, is that it may have the perverse effect of entrenching the stultifying power of the ruling elite.
And that wouldn’t just be ”silly”, Australia would be deeply complicit in a tragedy for Malaysia.
“UK urge’s Laotian authorities to investigate disappearance of community leader”
11 January 2013
UK Foreign Office Minister Hugo Swire has expressed concern about the disappearance of community leader Sombath Somphone in Vientiane, Laos.
Sombath Somphone founded the Participatory Development Training Center (PADETC) a non-profit private school in Vientiane and was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay award for his work promoting sustainable development in Laos. Sombath also worked with the UK to organise the Asia-Europe People’s Forum in October 2012.
Commenting on his recent disappearance Hugo Swire said:
“I am extremely concerned by the disappearance of the respected NGO worker Sombath Somphone in Vientiane, who went missing on 15 December 2012. Sombath has played a crucial role, over many years, in helping some of the poorest communities in Laos develop a stable means of income. He has proved a crucial partner in preparing and delivering with the UK a forum for young people in Laos last year. The UK Government strongly urges the Lao authorities to ensure a prompt, thorough and impartial investigation into Sombath’s disappearance, and to do all they can to ensure that Sombath is reunited with his family as matter of urgency.”
Former Thai prime minister Anand Panyarachun has appealed to the Lao government to do more to locate the missing activist Sombath Somphone, who disappeared in Vientiane nearly a month ago.
Anand, who attended the launch of a film at the Bangkok Arts Centre on Thursday evening, said he didn’t want to debate the circumstances of what occurred to Sombath – who exiles claim was abducted by government officials after being stopped at a police checkpoint in the capital.
But he urged Vientiane to do more to investigate, saying the 60-year-old social activist was a “very good man”.
Speaking during a debate on reconciliation televised by Thai PBS after the film showing, Anand said the disappearance of Sombath was bad for the region.
“I hope the Lao government would assume a more active role in finding out the truth of this particularly unwelcome event,” he said.
“It does touch on the value of human rights. There are disappearances [when people go missing] and enforced disappearances [when people may have been seized by the state].
“You can’t have enforced disappearances – it’s not something we like in this part of the world.”
The remarks by Anand are among the strongest yet by supporters in Thailand and throughout the region, and add to growing pressure on the socialist regime to come up with a more credible response on this matter.
The circumstances of Sombath’s disappearance were revealed on a closed-circuit video widely circulated on social media. It shows Sombath’s jeep stopping at a police checkpoint on December 15 and then being led away by two figures in plainclothes.
Vientiane has denied any knowledge of the affair, but Lao exiles say the incident fits a pattern of harassment of activists by the conservative Lao regime, which has a poor human rights record and is notoriously secretive.
Fears have also been voiced privately by supporters that Sombath has a health condition that could be aggravated if he is being detained secretly somewhere.
Earlier this week, former Thai senator Jon Ungpakorn called for the end of Asean’s policy of non-interference at a seminar which highlighted Sombath’s abduction.
“I feel that answers are needed,” Jon said. “The government has the responsibility to answer questions as to what has happened to him. The government of the Lao PDR [People’s Democratic Republic] is not really taking up this responsibility.”
Both Jon and Anand are former Magsaysay Award winners, as was Sombath, who won the award in 2005 for community leadership.
Sombath headed the Participatory Development Training Centre and was well-known for building up civil society independent of the government and opposing the Lao government’s views on how development should occur, especially large infrastructure projects like the Xayaburi Dam.
Jon, who was a senator from 2000 till 2006, said the abduction of Sombath is a vital test for Asean’s new human rights mechanism.
Rights activists warned yesterday that they will continue to lobby the Lao leaders because they believe the regime knows more about the incident but has refused to disclose details publicly.
Anand, who was prime minister twice for short periods in the early 1990s, is one of the region’s most distinguished statesman. His remarks followed a discussion about reconciliation after the screening of the film “Cambodia Dreams”, by veteran filmmaker Stanley Harper, at the Arts Centre yesterday.
JM if you are able to have a negative opinion fine but try to be fair and also present the other side. NGO’s staff are diverse . I have been involved with many of them for over 15 years in the region and i have to acknowledge their exceptional work and commitment. that they are a bunch of egos YES, but also compassionate and caring.
“With Laos Disappearance, Signs of a Liberalization in Backslide”
New York Times
By THOMAS FULLER
Published: January 10, 2013
VIENTIANE, Laos – He was last seen driving home in his old, rusty jeep. And then he vanished.
The disappearance nearly one month ago of Sombath Somphone, a United States-trained agriculture specialist who led one of the most successful nonprofit organizations in Laos, has baffled his family and friends and raised alarms that a nascent liberalization of the Communist-ruled country could be sliding backward.
Mr. Sombath, 60, who won many awards for his public service, was known to be nonconfrontational and adept at forging compromises with the authoritarian government of Laos.
“We have no malice against the government,” said Ng Shui Meng, Mr. Sombath’s wife, who is from Singapore and met Mr. Sombath while they both studied in the United States. “We want to live our lives quietly.”
The disappearance has set off an enormous campaign by Mr. Sombath’s large network of friends and aid workers across Southeast Asia who know him from his development work. The campaign has put Laos, an obscure country run by an opaque Communist party, under increasing pressure to provide answers.
The country has taken halting steps to modernize its one-party system in recent years but has also cracked down on dissent, and its security services have been linked to a series of politically motivated assassinations in neighboring Thailand.
Paradoxically for the Lao government, it is a network of cameras that the municipal police installed over the past three years to monitor “anti-social behavior” that have pointed to signs of the government’s involvement in Mr. Sombath’s disappearance.
Helpful workers at a local police station initially showed the family images of Mr. Sombath’s jeep stopped at a police checkpoint on the evening of Dec. 15. Mr. Sombath then appeared to be driven off in a white vehicle.
Family members had the presence of mind to record the footage with their own digital devices – crucial because the government now refuses to let them view the video again despite pleas by diplomats who would like to analyze it for clues like license plates. (The video is now circulating on YouTube and is also available at sombath.org, a site put up by Mr. Sombath’s friends and dedicated to tracing his whereabouts).
Since the search for Mr. Sombath began, the Lao government has issued only short statements that suggest, without offering details, that he may have been involved in a personal dispute. But those following the case closely remain unconvinced.
“The bottom line is that we haven’t heard anything beyond a brief statement that doesn’t clarify anything,” Karen B. Stewart, the U.S. ambassador to Laos, said in an interview. “There’s been no full report about the status of the investigation or whatever is going on.”
A mountainous and landlocked country of six million, Laos is often portrayed in guidebooks and tourist brochures as a gentle land of stilt houses along the Mekong River, smiling and easygoing rice farmers, Buddhist monks and village silk weavers.
But the contrast to these placid images is a Communist party, formally called the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, that crushes anything deemed to be a threat to its monopoly on power.
“There’s a nostalgic picture of women in their wraparound skirts, a beautiful country with tourist attractions,” said Adisorn Semyaem, an expert on Laos at the Mekong Studies Center at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. “That’s not the total picture. There’s also another side of the coin.”
A precise accounting of repression in Laos in difficult to obtain because the news media are controlled by the government and communication is poor across the impoverished countryside. But one measure of politically related violence can be found when it spills over into the country’s freewheeling neighbor, Thailand, where it is recorded by the police and reported in the news media.
Mr. Adisorn, who has researched Lao politics for the past two decades, has compiled a list of more than 20 Lao citizens assassinated in Thailand over what appear to be political reasons, including a Buddhist monk who opposed the government and a member of the former Lao royal family. The crimes all remain unresolved.
Inside Laos, the government periodically arrests members of Protestant Christian religious groups, farmers who complain that their land had been taken away and anyone else whom they judge to “have political agendas,” Mr. Adisorn said.
Mr. Adisorn has an extensive network of contacts inside the Lao government and has been asking about Mr. Sombath’s case. “I assume that he is still alive but that the government is finding it very difficult to find a way out of the situation,” he said.
An official who answered the telephone at the Lao Foreign Ministry advised a reporter to monitor the Lao press for updates on the case and said a spokesperson was not available.
There is a troubling precedent for a politically linked disappearance. In 2007, Sompawn Khantisouk, the manager of an ecotourism guesthouse who was outspoken in his criticism of Chinese-owned plantations in the north of the country, disappeared and has not been seen since.
If Laos has avoided the same level of scrutiny of other authoritarian countries in the region, it is partly because the political oppression is hardly visible to outsiders when they visit. The center of Vientiane has lively, outdoor restaurants and countless small hotels and tourist shops.
The country received a record 3.1 million foreign visitors last year – equivalent to half the population – according to the government, which promoted 2012 as Visit Laos Year under the slogan “Simply Beautiful.”
Tourists come for the mountain scenery, spicy Lao food, the charms of towns like Luang Prabang and the cultural legacies of the French colonial years – ocher buildings and nearly tax-free French wine.
But as the country opens up and embraces capitalism more vigorously, there are tensions between the old and new Laos, between a more transparent government and the more cloistered system that fought off U.S.-backed militias during what is known as the Secret War of the 1960s and 1970s.
“There’s not total, 100 percent agreement or understanding about how to manage a market economy, a more globally oriented rule-of-law state and yet maintain the kind of political system they have,” said Ms. Stewart, the U.S. ambassador.
The country’s National Assembly has taken a more assertive role in debating government policies that were previously dictated by the top leaders. Last year, Laos completed negotiations to join the World Trade Organization and was the host of a major meeting between the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the grouping of 10 countries in which Laos is seeking a more active role.
At the same time, the Lao government cracked down on budding signs of free expression. In January 2012, the authorities shut down a radio program that discussed the issue of land seizures – a hot topic with the increasing number of projects in rural areas led by Chinese and Vietnamese companies.
The host of that radio program, Ounkeo Souksavanh, said that farmers who appeared on the program were arrested several months later.
In December, the government expelled Anne-Sophie Gindroz, the head of the Lao chapter of the Swiss charity Helvetas, citing her “explicit rejection” of the Lao political system.
As for Mr. Sombath’s case, the possible motives for his disappearance remain unclear. He retired last year from his organization, the Participatory Development Training Center, but continued to be engaged with nonprofit organizations in Laos.
Some speculate that going after such a high-profile personality was a warning to other private groups.
“To this day I am baffled,” Mr. Sombath’s wife said.
She rejects the term “activist” that many news organizations have used in describing him. “We have lived here for a long time, during periods when Laos was less open than now, when people were afraid to talk openly. We survived that period without something like this happening.”
Mr. Sombath’s U.S. connections may have made some old-guard officials suspicious, friends and old acquaintances say. He was an exchange student in Wisconsin in high school and went to college in Hawaii.
But his farming roots – both his parents were rice farmers in Laos – and his three decades of carrying out programs to help the poor won over many people. In 2005, he was awarded the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award, which honors public service in Asia.
Ms. Ng frets for her husband’s health and safety at the couple’s home overlooking the Mekong River. Mr. Sombath has a prostate condition and had been prescribed daily medication.
“I don’t know where he is,” she said. “I hope he is safe.”
Poypiti Amatatham contributed reporting from Vientiane and Bangkok.
The snopsis and the screenplay are already to go. Just run down to the Bangkok Bank and show it to them, you’ll get the finance in a flash. After that the bidding war for production will begin. With channel 3’s strong record of edgy innovation they are a shoe to get the gig.
Everything is possible in the land of the free. Isn’t it?
Thank you SG-1 that is an excellent example of
“Poe’s Corollary” http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe%27s_Law
I couldn’t help but read it as parody yet had to force myself to accept it as serious. Very entertaining.
I believe a better English translation for paramita (“р╕Ър╕▓р╕гр╕бр╕╡/р╕Ыр╕▓р╕гр╕бр╕╡”) is “paragon”. Not only is the word closer in connotation to the Sanskrit, but since a paragon originally referred to an exquisite, unflawed jewel, it has the advantage of connecting to that other Buddhist metaphor, the Triple Gem triratana (р╕Юр╕гр╕░р╕гр╕▒р╕Хр╕Щр╕Хр╕гр╕▒р╕в).
Facebook 
Twitter 
Soundcloud 
Youtube 
Rss
Distressing developments in Laos
An Open Letter to Sombath’s Well-┬нWishers
January 14, 2013
From Ng Shui Meng, wife of Sombath Somphone
Since Sombath disappearance on the evening of 15 December 2012, my family and I have been touched by the great love, concern and support shown by friends, colleagues, international and regional agencies, civil society groups, government spokespersons, and the media who have joined hands to urge the Government of the Lao PDR to invest all their resources and capacities in their ongoing investigation of Sombath’s whereabouts, and to return him safely to me and to my family. We are most grateful and deeply touched by such show of solidarity for Sombath’s well-┬нтАР being.
While many articles and statements written about Sombath’s disappearance and urging his safe return have been helpful, some of the reports and comments also contain some factual errors or speculations. My greatest wish is the personal safety and well-┬нтАРbeing of my husband, Sombath, wherever he is. For this reason, I urge all well-тАРwishers not to stray away from the facts or to misrepresent Sombath or the nature of his work.
The facts as I know them
1. Sombath was last seen on 15 December 2012 driving in his jeep behind my vehicle. We were both going home to dinner. The last time I saw him from my rear view mirror was around 6:00 p.m. near the police post on KM 3 on Thadeua Road.
2. When he did not return home that night, we searched for Sombath’s whereabouts around the area where he was last seen and also searched the city’s hospital in the hope of finding Sombath, but to no avail.
3. On 16 December, we reported Sombath missing to the village, district and police authorities. Family searches were once more carried out in all the city’s hospitals, but there was no sign of Sombath.
4. On 17 December 2012, a request was made to the Vientiane Municipality Police Station to view the close circuit TV footages recorded by CCTV cameras near the police post where Sombath was last seen. The police officers on duty were very cooperative and allowed us to view the CCTV footages. From the TV footages, we saw Sombath stopped by the police at the police post. We saw Sombath get out of his jeep and enter into the police post.
5. Later a motorcyclist came by, parked the motorcycle near the jeep, running into the police post and later emerged and drove Sombath’s jeep away.
6. After a few minutes, a white truck with flashing lights stopped by the police post and two or three people were seen getting into the vehicle which drove off in a hurry.
7. The above facts were reported in my letter dated 17 December 2012 to the Chief of Cabinet of the Ministry of Public Security. On 18 December, I followed up by writing another letter to the Minister of Public Security, with a copy of the CCTV footage, and the report to the police. I urged the Minister to expedite the tracing of Sombath.
8. On 19 December 2012, the Lao Government issued a statement basically confirming that CCTV footage did show Sombath stopped at the police post for what it said was a routine check of vehicle documents. It also stated that later some people were seen going into a white truck but it could not confirm that Sombath was among them. It went on to say that Sombath could have been kidnapped presumably for reasons of personal conflict or business conflict. The statement ended by saying that the government would seriously investigate the whereabouts of Sombath and return him safely to his family.
9. On 26 December 2012, I was asked by the police to go to the Municipality Police Station, where I was asked to provide basic information about Sombath’s background, his family, his work, and my background and my work. My niece, my sister-┬нтАРin-┬нтАРlaw and and Sombath’s colleagues at PADETC were also questioned by the police.
10. On 04 January 2013, the Lao Ambassador based in Geneva, Mr Yong Chantalangsy, issued another statement once more stating that Sombath was not in police custody, and repeated that Sombath could have been kidnapped.
I have at no point refuted the government’s statement. In all my interviews with the press and in all my public statements, I have appealed to the Lao Government to expedite the investigation, find Sombath and to ensure his safety and quick return to me and the family. I also stated that Sombath has a medical condition that needs daily medication and that once returned to me, I would take Sombath to seek medical attention abroad until his full recuperation.
Sombath’s work
Over the last 30 years Sombath has worked openly to support the government’s policy of enhancing food security and improved livelihoods in the rural areas, promoting appropriate technologies in water and sanitation, improving teaching and learning in schools, and supporting human resource capacities, especially of young people, through training in leadership skills and community service. In recent years, he has worked closely with the Sangha to train monks to support the government’s drug reduction/rehabilitation programs and care and support for HIV infected/affected people.
In many recent articles and statements related to Sombath’s disappearance, he has sometimes been billed as a human rights defender or a social/ civil society activist. These terminologies do not accurately depict Sombath, the man or his work. It is true that Sombath through his projects has worked tirelessly to advance the well-┬нтАРbeing and support the building of human resource capacity of the rural poor. But, Sombath’s work has never been confrontational or antagonistic to government policy. Every project and every activity that Sombath has carried out, has been with the approval of the relevant government sector, and in cooperation with the local officials. This is because Sombath firmly believes that for any development program to be effective and have lasting impact, it needs to engage all sectors in Lao society -┬нтАР the government, mass organizations, NGOs, parents, teachers, youth, elders and villagers. This has been an abiding principle that has guided his work over the last 30 years.
Sombath’s development philosophy is that of promoting balanced and sustainable development. Sombath has never opposed economic development, but he urges that economic development be balanced with spiritual well-┬нтАР being, social improvement, and environmental and cultural protection. Sombath believes that by pursuing a balance between these 4 pillars of development is in the long run, the best way to achieving social harmony, economic stability, and environmental sustainability. This thinking is nothing new, and is reflected in the Lao Government’s own development agenda as the basic conditions needed to reduce poverty, achieve the Millennium Development Goals, and get Laos out of its Least Developed status by 2020.
Thank you.
Vientiane, Laos January 13, 2013
http://sombath.org/2013/01/14/open-letter-from-wife/
The benefits of contract farming
Great link. Never heard of that book. Thank you.
I am afraid, vocal Burmese crowd, as opposed to grassrot and the ones likely to read even the burmese translation Are all “got at” by this “development mantra” in a rush to lead the Asia in rice export and getting 4G’s and all that, there seems no cure.
With support and blessing from all partiers active in and for Burma, we are now in a headlong rush to be a “Windup Girl Land”.
Mekong bridge at Chiang Khong
Chinese “businessmen” are masters at devastating the pristine natural environment and destroying the traditional social fabric of local people. They have proved that not just in Laos, Burma or Cambodia. Chinese “business interests” will soon be everywhere, not just in their own backyard (“global sino-periphery” is the word lol)
The benefits of contract farming
Perhaps it’s time to translate The Windup Girl into Burmese.
Distressing developments in Laos
“Lao civil society…has been obliterated under a jackboot of fear.”
———–
“Learning from Lao”
Prachatai
Sun, 13/01/2013
Harrison George
This ASEAN Economic Community cannot come a moment too soon. If nothing else, it will give Thailand a chance to learn how to do things properly from the more advanced countries in ASEAN. Like Lao.
It is a common complaint that while Thailand is still bickering over the allocation of 3G mobile phone licences, Lao is ready with 4G. This is taken as a symbol of Thailand’s endemic inefficiency. But where does this inefficiency lie?
According to well-placed sources (as if anyone would cite poorly-placed sources), the superior efficiency of Lao resides in its streamlined system of bribery. Effectively, there is just one responsible agency, and anyone wanting a licence in Lao just pays them the one bribe and the deal is done.
In Thailand, there’s all sorts of people involved and you’ve no sooner paid off one than you find that there’s someone else expecting a backhander. And then another, and another who may already have taken money off your competitor. It is the time it takes to line up all the dots that makes Thailand lag behind its neighbour to the northeast.
So come on, corrupt officials, get your house in order. Surely it shouldn’t beyond you to figure out a one-stop bribery shop? The inefficiency of your corrupt practices is giving the country a bad name.
Then there is the recent enforced disappearance of Sombath Somphone in Vientiane. After the initial blunder in allowing CCTV footage to be copied onto the Internet, the response of the Vientiane authorities has been exemplary. Comparisons to the 2004 case of Somchai Neelapaijit in Thailand are not flattering to those agents of the Thai state whose duties include crimes of this sort.
First of all, the Lao choice of victim has been far superior to the Thai case. Somchai was snatched in Bangkok right after he had made it clear that he was going to name police names in the torture of Muslim suspects. Remove him from the scene, and who are you intimidating? Presumably anyone else thinking of publicly exposing criminals in uniform in the next few days. And there aren’t too many of those.
But people doing ordinary development work, protesting government development disasters or criticizing politicians’ greed and stupidity were not going to be scared off by this kind of threat. The high-ranking thugs may have protected themselves from scandal, but otherwise, life went on as before, except that now the disappearance of Somchai itself became another stick with which to beat the authorities.
But in Sombath, the Lao security goons have picked a winner. Soft-spoken, accommodating, and well-respected, Sombath posed no clear and present threat to the Lao powers-that-be other than by demonstrating that there was a superior way of doing things which the Lao government wasn’t really interested in. There is widespread speculation about what may have triggered his abduction, but it is only speculation. Nobody really knows.
So the effect has been properly paralyzing. Nobody in Lao can guess who will be next. Nobody knows where the line is that they should not cross. Some people have left the country; some have done a duck dive, flitting from safe house to safe house in the hope that the security forces are still a few steps behind. And everyone is keeping their mouths firmly shut. Lao civil society, always a poor scrawny thing, has been obliterated under a jackboot of fear.
All the shouting and screaming is being done outside the country and Thailand, for all its Computer-Related Crime Act and other censorship laws, could learn a thing or two from Lao about keeping its people in the dark of ignorance.
Then there has been the Lao government response to this external pressure (and by the way, the pressure from the Thai government over the Sombath case seems to have been so intense as to be invisible). The Lao Ministry of Foreign Affairs has simply brazened it out with bare-faced fairy tales.
He was stopped by traffic police for a normal check of his documents, they claim. The fact that a mysterious man on a motorcycle can drive his car away from outside the police post and that someone can escort him into a vehicle with flashing lights indicates, in the opinion of the Lao government, some kind of personal or business conflict.
Compare that with the virtual admission by then PM Thaksin that he knew what had happened to Somchai but wasn’t saying and the statement in parliament by then Deputy PM Chavalit that Somchai was dead. And the appearance of Somchai’s car at the bus station with all fingerprints so thoroughly wiped clean that it had the fingerprints of a police operation all over it.
No, when it comes to being properly criminal, there’s a lot to learn from Lao.
http://prachatai.com/english/node/3480?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+prachataienglish+(Prachatai+in+English)
Mekong bridge at Chiang Khong
Tachilek is in Myanmar, a big different from Laos. A lot of money spend on this development at Houay Say, I already seen the hotel there and it is very nice 5 star.
The benefits of contract farming
Thank you, David.
I wondered if there was a catch somewhere, and I’m not surprised to learn that they try to rope these growers into their net so they have a captive market for their wares, pesticides, chemical fertilizers and the lot.
USAID of course arguably does more for US corporations such as the agribusiness than for the locals in the developing countries. There’s the example of food aid putting local farmers out of business and the populace becoming reliant on outside help before aid translates into trade. It’s a good ploy.
Bob Carr and electoral reforms in Malaysia
Senator Nick Xenaphon suggests that Australia maybe complicit in entrenching a corrupt elite through its free trade agreement in Malaysia:
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/free-trade-should-follow-fair-elections-20130111-2cl77.html#ixzz2HlnSfsZX
Distressing developments in Laos
“UK urge’s Laotian authorities to investigate disappearance of community leader”
11 January 2013
UK Foreign Office Minister Hugo Swire has expressed concern about the disappearance of community leader Sombath Somphone in Vientiane, Laos.
Sombath Somphone founded the Participatory Development Training Center (PADETC) a non-profit private school in Vientiane and was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay award for his work promoting sustainable development in Laos. Sombath also worked with the UK to organise the Asia-Europe People’s Forum in October 2012.
Commenting on his recent disappearance Hugo Swire said:
“I am extremely concerned by the disappearance of the respected NGO worker Sombath Somphone in Vientiane, who went missing on 15 December 2012. Sombath has played a crucial role, over many years, in helping some of the poorest communities in Laos develop a stable means of income. He has proved a crucial partner in preparing and delivering with the UK a forum for young people in Laos last year. The UK Government strongly urges the Lao authorities to ensure a prompt, thorough and impartial investigation into Sombath’s disappearance, and to do all they can to ensure that Sombath is reunited with his family as matter of urgency.”
Distressing developments in Laos
“Anand urges Vientiane to find missing activist”
The Nation (Thailand)
January 11, 2013
Former Thai prime minister Anand Panyarachun has appealed to the Lao government to do more to locate the missing activist Sombath Somphone, who disappeared in Vientiane nearly a month ago.
Anand, who attended the launch of a film at the Bangkok Arts Centre on Thursday evening, said he didn’t want to debate the circumstances of what occurred to Sombath – who exiles claim was abducted by government officials after being stopped at a police checkpoint in the capital.
But he urged Vientiane to do more to investigate, saying the 60-year-old social activist was a “very good man”.
Speaking during a debate on reconciliation televised by Thai PBS after the film showing, Anand said the disappearance of Sombath was bad for the region.
“I hope the Lao government would assume a more active role in finding out the truth of this particularly unwelcome event,” he said.
“It does touch on the value of human rights. There are disappearances [when people go missing] and enforced disappearances [when people may have been seized by the state].
“You can’t have enforced disappearances – it’s not something we like in this part of the world.”
The remarks by Anand are among the strongest yet by supporters in Thailand and throughout the region, and add to growing pressure on the socialist regime to come up with a more credible response on this matter.
The circumstances of Sombath’s disappearance were revealed on a closed-circuit video widely circulated on social media. It shows Sombath’s jeep stopping at a police checkpoint on December 15 and then being led away by two figures in plainclothes.
Vientiane has denied any knowledge of the affair, but Lao exiles say the incident fits a pattern of harassment of activists by the conservative Lao regime, which has a poor human rights record and is notoriously secretive.
Fears have also been voiced privately by supporters that Sombath has a health condition that could be aggravated if he is being detained secretly somewhere.
Earlier this week, former Thai senator Jon Ungpakorn called for the end of Asean’s policy of non-interference at a seminar which highlighted Sombath’s abduction.
“I feel that answers are needed,” Jon said. “The government has the responsibility to answer questions as to what has happened to him. The government of the Lao PDR [People’s Democratic Republic] is not really taking up this responsibility.”
Both Jon and Anand are former Magsaysay Award winners, as was Sombath, who won the award in 2005 for community leadership.
Sombath headed the Participatory Development Training Centre and was well-known for building up civil society independent of the government and opposing the Lao government’s views on how development should occur, especially large infrastructure projects like the Xayaburi Dam.
Jon, who was a senator from 2000 till 2006, said the abduction of Sombath is a vital test for Asean’s new human rights mechanism.
Rights activists warned yesterday that they will continue to lobby the Lao leaders because they believe the regime knows more about the incident but has refused to disclose details publicly.
Anand, who was prime minister twice for short periods in the early 1990s, is one of the region’s most distinguished statesman. His remarks followed a discussion about reconciliation after the screening of the film “Cambodia Dreams”, by veteran filmmaker Stanley Harper, at the Arts Centre yesterday.
Distressing developments in Laos
JM if you are able to have a negative opinion fine but try to be fair and also present the other side. NGO’s staff are diverse . I have been involved with many of them for over 15 years in the region and i have to acknowledge their exceptional work and commitment. that they are a bunch of egos YES, but also compassionate and caring.
Distressing developments in Laos
“With Laos Disappearance, Signs of a Liberalization in Backslide”
New York Times
By THOMAS FULLER
Published: January 10, 2013
VIENTIANE, Laos – He was last seen driving home in his old, rusty jeep. And then he vanished.
The disappearance nearly one month ago of Sombath Somphone, a United States-trained agriculture specialist who led one of the most successful nonprofit organizations in Laos, has baffled his family and friends and raised alarms that a nascent liberalization of the Communist-ruled country could be sliding backward.
Mr. Sombath, 60, who won many awards for his public service, was known to be nonconfrontational and adept at forging compromises with the authoritarian government of Laos.
“We have no malice against the government,” said Ng Shui Meng, Mr. Sombath’s wife, who is from Singapore and met Mr. Sombath while they both studied in the United States. “We want to live our lives quietly.”
The disappearance has set off an enormous campaign by Mr. Sombath’s large network of friends and aid workers across Southeast Asia who know him from his development work. The campaign has put Laos, an obscure country run by an opaque Communist party, under increasing pressure to provide answers.
The country has taken halting steps to modernize its one-party system in recent years but has also cracked down on dissent, and its security services have been linked to a series of politically motivated assassinations in neighboring Thailand.
Paradoxically for the Lao government, it is a network of cameras that the municipal police installed over the past three years to monitor “anti-social behavior” that have pointed to signs of the government’s involvement in Mr. Sombath’s disappearance.
Helpful workers at a local police station initially showed the family images of Mr. Sombath’s jeep stopped at a police checkpoint on the evening of Dec. 15. Mr. Sombath then appeared to be driven off in a white vehicle.
Family members had the presence of mind to record the footage with their own digital devices – crucial because the government now refuses to let them view the video again despite pleas by diplomats who would like to analyze it for clues like license plates. (The video is now circulating on YouTube and is also available at sombath.org, a site put up by Mr. Sombath’s friends and dedicated to tracing his whereabouts).
Since the search for Mr. Sombath began, the Lao government has issued only short statements that suggest, without offering details, that he may have been involved in a personal dispute. But those following the case closely remain unconvinced.
“The bottom line is that we haven’t heard anything beyond a brief statement that doesn’t clarify anything,” Karen B. Stewart, the U.S. ambassador to Laos, said in an interview. “There’s been no full report about the status of the investigation or whatever is going on.”
A mountainous and landlocked country of six million, Laos is often portrayed in guidebooks and tourist brochures as a gentle land of stilt houses along the Mekong River, smiling and easygoing rice farmers, Buddhist monks and village silk weavers.
But the contrast to these placid images is a Communist party, formally called the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, that crushes anything deemed to be a threat to its monopoly on power.
“There’s a nostalgic picture of women in their wraparound skirts, a beautiful country with tourist attractions,” said Adisorn Semyaem, an expert on Laos at the Mekong Studies Center at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. “That’s not the total picture. There’s also another side of the coin.”
A precise accounting of repression in Laos in difficult to obtain because the news media are controlled by the government and communication is poor across the impoverished countryside. But one measure of politically related violence can be found when it spills over into the country’s freewheeling neighbor, Thailand, where it is recorded by the police and reported in the news media.
Mr. Adisorn, who has researched Lao politics for the past two decades, has compiled a list of more than 20 Lao citizens assassinated in Thailand over what appear to be political reasons, including a Buddhist monk who opposed the government and a member of the former Lao royal family. The crimes all remain unresolved.
Inside Laos, the government periodically arrests members of Protestant Christian religious groups, farmers who complain that their land had been taken away and anyone else whom they judge to “have political agendas,” Mr. Adisorn said.
Mr. Adisorn has an extensive network of contacts inside the Lao government and has been asking about Mr. Sombath’s case. “I assume that he is still alive but that the government is finding it very difficult to find a way out of the situation,” he said.
An official who answered the telephone at the Lao Foreign Ministry advised a reporter to monitor the Lao press for updates on the case and said a spokesperson was not available.
There is a troubling precedent for a politically linked disappearance. In 2007, Sompawn Khantisouk, the manager of an ecotourism guesthouse who was outspoken in his criticism of Chinese-owned plantations in the north of the country, disappeared and has not been seen since.
If Laos has avoided the same level of scrutiny of other authoritarian countries in the region, it is partly because the political oppression is hardly visible to outsiders when they visit. The center of Vientiane has lively, outdoor restaurants and countless small hotels and tourist shops.
The country received a record 3.1 million foreign visitors last year – equivalent to half the population – according to the government, which promoted 2012 as Visit Laos Year under the slogan “Simply Beautiful.”
Tourists come for the mountain scenery, spicy Lao food, the charms of towns like Luang Prabang and the cultural legacies of the French colonial years – ocher buildings and nearly tax-free French wine.
But as the country opens up and embraces capitalism more vigorously, there are tensions between the old and new Laos, between a more transparent government and the more cloistered system that fought off U.S.-backed militias during what is known as the Secret War of the 1960s and 1970s.
“There’s not total, 100 percent agreement or understanding about how to manage a market economy, a more globally oriented rule-of-law state and yet maintain the kind of political system they have,” said Ms. Stewart, the U.S. ambassador.
The country’s National Assembly has taken a more assertive role in debating government policies that were previously dictated by the top leaders. Last year, Laos completed negotiations to join the World Trade Organization and was the host of a major meeting between the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the grouping of 10 countries in which Laos is seeking a more active role.
At the same time, the Lao government cracked down on budding signs of free expression. In January 2012, the authorities shut down a radio program that discussed the issue of land seizures – a hot topic with the increasing number of projects in rural areas led by Chinese and Vietnamese companies.
The host of that radio program, Ounkeo Souksavanh, said that farmers who appeared on the program were arrested several months later.
In December, the government expelled Anne-Sophie Gindroz, the head of the Lao chapter of the Swiss charity Helvetas, citing her “explicit rejection” of the Lao political system.
As for Mr. Sombath’s case, the possible motives for his disappearance remain unclear. He retired last year from his organization, the Participatory Development Training Center, but continued to be engaged with nonprofit organizations in Laos.
Some speculate that going after such a high-profile personality was a warning to other private groups.
“To this day I am baffled,” Mr. Sombath’s wife said.
She rejects the term “activist” that many news organizations have used in describing him. “We have lived here for a long time, during periods when Laos was less open than now, when people were afraid to talk openly. We survived that period without something like this happening.”
Mr. Sombath’s U.S. connections may have made some old-guard officials suspicious, friends and old acquaintances say. He was an exchange student in Wisconsin in high school and went to college in Hawaii.
But his farming roots – both his parents were rice farmers in Laos – and his three decades of carrying out programs to help the poor won over many people. In 2005, he was awarded the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award, which honors public service in Asia.
Ms. Ng frets for her husband’s health and safety at the couple’s home overlooking the Mekong River. Mr. Sombath has a prostate condition and had been prescribed daily medication.
“I don’t know where he is,” she said. “I hope he is safe.”
Poypiti Amatatham contributed reporting from Vientiane and Bangkok.
Domesticating royal power
On the creation of the king’s myths, see the documents in the story at: http://thaipoliticalprisoners.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/making-king/
Bhumibol, Obama, Yingluck
Some more war movie near Siam Cenima.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8j5SwKStSFA
Domesticating royal power
reply
Can not help, it is issued by our government. Sorry for yours, that no longer be able to do so
Bhumibol, Obama, Yingluck
This story even made news in Oz.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-08/an-thai-soap-opera-axed-over-fears-it-could-destabilise-country/4456244
Even the commentators are the usual suspects.
Bhumibol, Obama, Yingluck
Here is another one for you Vichai N.
http://www.newmandala.org
/2011/04/13/seditious-tales-in-thailand/
The snopsis and the screenplay are already to go. Just run down to the Bangkok Bank and show it to them, you’ll get the finance in a flash. After that the bidding war for production will begin. With channel 3’s strong record of edgy innovation they are a shoe to get the gig.
Everything is possible in the land of the free. Isn’t it?
Domesticating royal power
Thank you SG-1 that is an excellent example of
“Poe’s Corollary”
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe%27s_Law
I couldn’t help but read it as parody yet had to force myself to accept it as serious. Very entertaining.
Domesticating royal power
I believe a better English translation for paramita (“р╕Ър╕▓р╕гр╕бр╕╡/р╕Ыр╕▓р╕гр╕бр╕╡”) is “paragon”. Not only is the word closer in connotation to the Sanskrit, but since a paragon originally referred to an exquisite, unflawed jewel, it has the advantage of connecting to that other Buddhist metaphor, the Triple Gem triratana (р╕Юр╕гр╕░р╕гр╕▒р╕Хр╕Щр╕Хр╕гр╕▒р╕в).
Domesticating royal power
http://www.thaiembassy.org/seoul/contents/files/news-20121227-113144-157955.pdf