Category: Articles & Reports

Posted on

Suspected abduction of Lao rights advocate remembered on 12-year anniversary of disappearance

Voice of America: 16 December 2024

A pamphlet about Sombath Somphone sits on display at an event in Bangkok, Thailand, Dec. 15, 2022, marking the 10-year anniversary of his enforced disappearance in Laos.

BANGKOK — Rights groups and activists Monday continued to urge the government of Laos to provide answers about the suspected abduction of prominent rights advocate Sombath Somphone, who was last seen at a police checkpoint in the country’s capital 12 years ago.In CCTV footage captured by a roadside camera on December 15, 2012, in central Vientiane, Sombath is seen being pulled over at a police post, stepping out of his Jeep and getting into a pickup truck that drives him away.

He has not been seen or heard from since. The government of Laos, an authoritarian, one-party communist regime, claims it knows nothing of what happened.

“We continue to ask: Where is Sombath? We continue to say we are not going anywhere. We’re going to continue to demand answers from the Lao government. His is a case of enforced disappearance in the purest form,” Phil Robertson, director of Asia Human Rights and Labor Advocates, said Monday at an event in Bangkok marking the anniversary. Continue reading “Suspected abduction of Lao rights advocate remembered on 12-year anniversary of disappearance”

Posted on

“Where is Sombath?” Family of disappeared Lao activist demands answers

OHCHR: 04 October 2024

For 12 long, painful years, Shui-Meng Ng has been looking for an answer to one simple question: “Where is Sombath?”

Sombath Somphone, Ng’s husband, was last seen on 15 December 2012 at a police checkpoint on a busy street of Vientiane, the capital of Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Footage from a CCTV camera shows the award-winning community activist and civil society leader being stopped by police officers, minutes before unidentified individuals force Somphone into another vehicle and drive away.

Since that day, Ng has led a tireless campaign in search of truth and justice for her husband and to end enforced disappearances in Lao PDR and elsewhere.

At the opening of the 27th session of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) in Geneva, Ng recounted her struggle to shed light on the case, sharing her appeal with human rights groups, victims, UN human rights experts and organisms, and Member States.

“I don’t know how long I will be able to live on. But I can say I will continue my struggle to find truth and justice for Sombath until my last breath,” Ng said in her statement. “The Lao government authorities have ignored my appeal for 12 years and they continue to tell the people who asked about what happened to Sombath that the investigation is still ongoing.”

Emotional impact on families

Ng spoke of the profound emotional impact of enforced disappearances on families, who are left in a permanent state of limbo, without knowing the whereabouts of their loved ones.

“Despite the passing of time, the pain, the suffering does not go away. It remains as time passes because the fear that he will not come back looms larger and larger. And the hope that he will return also fades,” she said. “That is why enforced disappearances is the most difficult criminal act against human rights.”

At the time of his enforced disappearance, the internationally acclaimed agronomist and development leader, who was born in 1952, was working with poor farmers and rural communities to improve their livelihoods and protect the environment.

Ng has repeatedly appealed to Lao government authorities to investigate the case. She told the Committee that she believes her husband was targeted because he had “annoyed some powerful people who thought that what he was doing was undermining their interests.”

A Singapore national who holds a PhD in sociology, Ng has campaigned around the world for Somphone’s release and has written a book on the case, “Silencing of a Laotian Son: The Life, Work and Enforced Disappearance of Sombath Somphone.” She also writes a blog, where she posts personal letters and poems to her husband, and denounces the Government’s lack of action.

Disappearances on the rise

Enforced disappearance has frequently been used as a strategy to spread terror within societies. Experts warn it has become a global problem and is not restricted to a specific region of the world. According to UN figures, hundreds of thousands of people have vanished during conflicts or periods of repression in at least 85 countries around the world, but also in time of peace, in all regions of the world.

In his opening statement of the session, Mahamane Cisse-Gouro, Director of the Human Rights Council and Treaty Mechanisms Division at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, referred to the increase of enforced disappearances around the world as a result of national and international conflicts, and growing polarization within and between countries.

Replying to Ng on behalf of the Committee, expert Barbara Lochbihler said that since Somphone was disappeared, civil society organizations in Lao PDR operated in fear and have become more careful in their work.

“Sombath Somphone’s case clearly shows that an enforced disappearance has not only serious consequences for family and friends who are left behind, it very often has a chilling effect on the civil society of the given community or country,” she said.

Lochbihler said the Committee was stepping up its outreach to governments and the broader human rights movement so that countries ratify the Convention as part of a fight against enforced disappearances.

“We will appeal to the Lao government to demonstrate this political will. And we will never forget the victims,” Lochbihler said.

As dawn breaks every morn
My anger against the injustice and unfairness of your disappearance
Grows
Why you, why me, why us? Why the countless victims
Left bereft, living in fear, living in despair!

Shui-Meng Ng, from her poem “As Dawn Breaks Every Morn

During a visit to Lao PDR in June 2024, UN Human Rights chief Volker Türk called on the Government to continue investigations into cases of enforced disappearance, including that of Somphone, and to ratify the UN Convention for the Protection of all Persons against Enforced Disappearances.

Lao PDR has signed but has not ratified the Convention.

The Committee is a body of independent experts tasked with monitoring the implementation of the UN Convention for the Protection of all Persons against Enforced Disappearances by State parties. It works to support victims, civil society organizations, national human rights institutions and States to search for and locate disappeared persons, eradicate, punish and prevent this crime, and repair the damage suffered by the victims.

Posted on

Sombath’s Story: The Significance of One Marginal Life

Global Asia  March, 2024

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

Silencing of a Laotian Son: The Life, Work and Enforced Disappearance of Sombath Somphone
By Ng Shui Meng
Spirit in Education Movement and International Network of Engaged Buddhists, 2022, 268 pages, $10 (Paperback)

For over 11 years, a Singaporean wife has been haunted by two questions about her Laotian husband: Where is he? What happened to him? She is Ng Shui Meng, who last saw Sombath Somphone driving his rundown jeep on a Saturday evening in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. She was in her car, ahead of Sombath’s, as they headed home for dinner. But he never made it. He was plucked off the streets after being stopped at a police post, bundled into a truck and has never been seen since.

Shui Meng’s ability to trace this chilling display of enforced disappearance serves as an apt opening to her book, which explores the unanswered questions that have haunted her, and the paths in Sombath’s life that led to this nightmare. But what helped her describe the shocking events on that fateful day — Dec. 15, 2012 — also says as much about the oppressive and opaque world of Laos, a communist-ruled, one-party state wedged between China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Continue reading “Sombath’s Story: The Significance of One Marginal Life”

Posted on

Book Review: Silencing of a Laotian Son

By Kearrin Sims    Asian Studies Review: 21 March 2022

Silencing of a Laotian son: the life, work, and enforced disappearance of Sombath Somphone, by Ng Shui Meng, Spirit in Education Movement & International Network of Engaged Buddhists, 2022, US$10.00 (paperback), US$5.00 (eBook)

On 15 December 2012, Sombath Somphone was abducted at a police checkpoint in the Lao capital of Vientiane. The victim of an enforced disappearance, his whereabouts remains unknown.

In Silencing of a Laotian Son, Ng Shui Meng provides a moving memoir of Sombath’s life, work and disappearance. Beginning by detailing the circumstances of his abduction, the book then shifts back to Sombath’s childhood to provide a chronological biography that charts his life experiences across Laos, the United States and Singapore. Later chapters discuss many of the efforts that have been made to locate Sombath since 2012, as well as the unrelenting stonewalling of these efforts by the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP). Continue reading “Book Review: Silencing of a Laotian Son”

Posted on

The Forced Disappearance of Sombath Somphone

The Wrath-Bearing Tree:  by J. Malcolm Garcia

Ng Shui Meng speaks of her husband Sombath Somphone in the present tense, with a firm matter-of-fact tone about his disappearance, a way, I presume, for her to maintain control in a situation where she has none and knows nothing but heartbreak. Yet I hear the deep sentiment behind the words. To her, Sombath is much more than the internationally acclaimed, award-winning development worker who vanished one night years ago. He is her partner, companion and mentor, a man with a quiet presence whom she relies on even in his absence. Although short and thin, he stood out in a crowd partly because of his shock of silver white hair. Most older Lao men dye their hair, she explains. Government officials all have black hair but Sombath has this head of white hair, and he always wears a cotton peasant jacket and yet there is something about him that makes everyone feel deferential toward him. That may have been a contributing factor to his disappearance, Shui Meng muses, this deference, the tranquil influence he has. He would never call himself an activist. He is not confrontational. Sombath believes in cooperation and works with Lao officials. In private he can be critical of the government but never in public. He’s a pragmatist and strategic about what he does. Although he is not political, he inspires people. Perhaps that is what led to his undoing.

On December 15, 2012, Somphone was stopped at a police checkpoint in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, and was never seen or heard from again. Lao officials denied any involvement. Officials with human rights organizations believe Somphone was the victim of a forced disappearance by the government. Then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded answers and the European Parliament expressed its concern but to no avail. The Lao government insisted it knew nothing. Almost nine years later, his fate and his whereabouts remain a mystery. His friends can only speculate on why he was taken. Continue reading “The Forced Disappearance of Sombath Somphone”

Posted on

Southeast Asia’s Desaparecidos

The Diplomat:  10 June 2020 by David Hutt

Enforced disappearances — a tragedy all too familiar in Latin America — are increasingly becoming a feature of Southeast Asian politics, too.

One of bloody characters of Latin American history is that of los desaparecidos, the activist or dissident or just unfortunate person who says the wrong thing who suddenly disappears, never to be heard of again. Sometimes their body is discovered years later, but in most cases they remain missing forever.   

In the English language, there is no word that conveys the sense of hopelessness and not knowing. The family who finds a murdered loved one can at least grieve – but for the families of those who remain disappeared, it is the not knowing that most consumes their anguish. Having spoken to families of desaparecidos from Argentina to Guatemala, the not-knowing is still as raw as it when their loved ones disappeared decades ago. Continue reading “Southeast Asia’s Desaparecidos”

Posted on

Bertelsmann-Stiftung’s 2018 Report

BertelsmannStiftung Foundation: 2018

Bertelsmann Stiftung-logo… two weeks later another AEPF organizer, Sombath Somphone, disappeared after being stopped at a police checkpoint on a busy Vientiane road. Although the government pleaded that it was investigating Sombath’s disappearance, its failure to make any progress over the following years intensified speculation that he had been silenced due to his advocacy work. After these incidents, government leaders targeted civil society in speeches and, in 2014, introduced guidelines to tighten the regulation of international NGOs.

From the 2018 Bertelsmann-Stiflung’s Laos Country Report.  Laos was ranked 106th out of 129 countries on the foundation’s Transformation Index

Posted on

A clear condemnation is necessary

LMHR 2016-06-14Sombath continues to be an inspiration to many in Laos and beyond. Those who struggle for justice, for sustainable development, for respect of fundamental rights deserve better than silence.

…it is of utmost importance that international community present in Laos clearly condemns his enforced disappearance. It is not enough to ask for an investigation. A clear condemnation is necessary to defend Sombath’s legacy in the area of sustainable development. We cannot let propaganda damage Sombath’s reputation and contribution to his country, and have rumors being spread on reasons justifying what happened to him, to the point that Sombath has become a taboo in his own country.

From Is International Aid Complicit in the Repression in Laos? by Anne-Sophie Gindroz. Presented at a conference of the same title sponsored by the Lao Movement for Human Rights held in Paris on 14 June 2016. Click on the link for the full presentation.

Posted on

BertelsmannStiftung Foundation’s 2016 Report

BertelsmannStiftung Foundation: 2016

Bertelsmann Stiftung-logoParty leaders furthermore urged tighter control over civil society organizations in the face of alleged but unsubstantiated efforts to undermine the party. In the wake of community leader Sombath Somphone’s unexplained disappearance in late 2012, the deplorable investigation of which attracted condemnation from around the world, increased pressure on civil society organizations produced levels of fear and self-censorship reminiscent of a more oppressive past. In this context, leaders’ ongoing claims to be strengthening the rule of law – another rhetorical theme in Laos – continued to fall flat.

From the 2016 BertelsmannStiflung Foundation’s Laos Country Report.  On its Political Transformation Index, the foundation ranked the Lao PDR 120th out of 127 countries. Only North Korea ranked lower among Asian nations.

Posted on

Laos in 2016: Sustainable Development and the Work of Sombath Somphone

By Kearrin Sims

Introduction

Logo Please-return-Sombath-SafelyIn 2016 it will be 20 years since the Government of Laos (GoL) first announced its goal to graduate from Least Developed Country (LDC) status by 2020.1 During this time, much has changed. With the exception of a few years following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, economic growth has remained strong and in 2011 the World Bank raised Laos’ income categorization from a low-income economy to a lower-middle income economy.2 Foreign Direct Investment has also growing rapidly and strong progress has been made on a number of the country’s Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets. This has led the UNDP to categorize Laos as the 6th most successful country for improved human development over the past 40 years.3

Yet alongside these markers of progress, there is another story to be told about ‘development’ in Laos. This is a story of widening inequality, severe environmental degradation, human rights abuses, state and private sector corruption, persistently high maternal mortality and malnutrition rates, land grabbing and forced resettlement as well as tensions with fellow ASEAN countries over controversial Mekong hydropower projects.4 These widespread and often interrelated challenges have led to new forms of poverty and damaged the country’s international reputation. Continue reading “Laos in 2016: Sustainable Development and the Work of Sombath Somphone”