News Archives - Page 11 of 36 - Sombath Somphone | ສົມບັດ ສົມພອນ

July 5, 2016

Surface missing devt worker Sombath: Asia-Europe People’s Forum to Lao govt

Interaksyon: 05 July 2016

ULAAN BAATAR – Sombath Somphone, the missing development worker who won the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prize, has been a focal point of the 11th Asia-Europe People’s Forum here.

The estimated 500 participants from the two continents and the host country Mongolia were asked by Somphone’s wife Shui Meng Ng to sign a petition asking the Lao government to surface him now.

Ng’s message, read by Evelyn Balais-Serrano of the Bangkok-based Forum Asia, also asked the Lao government to conclude its four-year investigation into what the international community, including the United Nations, the European Union, and the United States, has already dubbed as a case of enforced disappearance.

Her assumption that “AEPF was a safe, inclusive space for civil society engagement was misplaced” when Somphone disappeared right in front of a police outpost in the Lao capital of Vientiane in December 2012, Ng said. Continue reading “Surface missing devt worker Sombath: Asia-Europe People’s Forum to Lao govt”

June 14, 2016

How about a little financial pressure?

They have disappeared him. His name is Sombath Somphone, and he was — I’m not sure what the right tense is — a civil-society leader. They snatched him out of his car…

I’m thinking, “Can’t some government turn the screws on Laos — the financial screws — until they cough this man up? Should it be that hard? It doesn’t require an invasion or the breaking of diplomatic relations or anything, does it? How about a little financial pressure, à la the Magnitsky Act? Anything!”

Jay Nordlinger, in Trolls, Wales, whales, Nobelists, heroes, heroines … National Review, 02 June 2016

June 10, 2016

Vì sao Lào vẫn thẳng tay trấn áp về nhân quyền ?

RFI: 09 tháng sou 2016 By Arnaud Dubus

Ba thanh niên Lào đã bị chính quyền Viêng Chăn bắt giữ và đã bị giam giữ bí mật vì tội chỉ trích chế độ trên mạng Facebook. Cả ba người đã phải “thú nhận lỗi lầm” của họ trên đài truyền hình Nhà nước hồi cuối tháng 5/2016 rồi. Theo thông tín viên Arnaud Dubus tại Bangkok, sự cố này không phải là chưa từng có và điều đó cho thấy là chính phủ Lào không chút mảy may lo ngại trước các áp lực của cộng đồng quốc tế trong việc tôn trọng tự do ngôn luận.

RFI: Thân chào anh Dubus, anh có thể cho chúng tôi rõ về vụ bắt giữ ba thanh niên Lào này ?

Arnaud Dubus: Cả ba thanh niên, gồm một cô gái, tên Lodkham Thammavong, 30 tuổi, bạn trai của cô – Somphone Phimmasone, 29 tuổi và một người khác, tên Soukan Chaithad, 32 tuổi cùng làm việc tại Bangkok, như hàng ngàn thanh niên Lào khác. Thammavong từng làm giúp việc nhà ; Somphone – làm bảo vệ nhà máy, còn Soukan, người giao hàng. Continue reading “Vì sao Lào vẫn thẳng tay trấn áp về nhân quyền ?”

June 7, 2016June 9, 2016

Rights group demands Laos release detained activists

Turkish Weekly: 07 June 2016, By Max Constant

Rights groups have called on Laos to immediately release three young Laotians arrested and detained since March on charges of criticizing the country’s communist government.

The trio is accused of participating in a demonstration last December in front of the Laos embassy in Thailand, and criticizing the “regime” on Facebook.

“The government’s systematic repression of all forms of peaceful dissent underscores the immense gap between Vientiane’s promises to the international community and its abusive behavior at home,” Karim Lahidji, president of the Paris-based International Federation of human rights, said Monday in a joint statement with the Laos movement for human rights.

“Laos authorities must immediately and unconditionally release three individuals who have been arbitrarily arrested and detained incommunicado for criticizing the government,” he added.

Lodkham Thammavong, a 30-year-old domestic worker, Somphone Phimmasone, a 29-year-old security guard, and delivery man Soukan Chaithad, 33, were shown May 27 on a Laos state security TV channel in what appeared to be a pre-recorded broadcast admitting that they recognized their mistake of “getting involved with a group that protested against the country’s policies”. Continue reading “Rights group demands Laos release detained activists”

June 7, 2016June 14, 2016

Laos cracks down on social media critics

Al Jazeera: 06 June 2016, By Preeti Jha

In a new strike on freedom of expression, Laos broadcasts a stark warning to social media users.

Al Jazeera-June-2016 — Soukan Chaithad and Somphone Phimmasone on Laos national TV [Preeti Jha/Al Jazeera]

Vientiane, Laos – With their heads hung low, three Laos nationals quietly apologise on state TV for betraying the country through anti-government Facebook posts, a striking parade of apparent confessions in the communist regime’s latest crackdown on dissent.

The ominous broadcast in late May was the first news of the trio for families desperate to know their whereabouts since they were arrested in March.

“From now on I will behave well, change my attitude and stop all activities that betray the nation,” said 29-year-old Somphone Phimmasone on Lao National TV.

He sat between the two co-accused: his girlfriend, Lodkham Thammavong, 30, and another man, 32-year-old Soukan Chaithad, each wearing the trademark royal blue uniforms of prisoners.

Flanked by a row of straight-backed police officers, beneath a banner proclaiming “peace, independence, unity, prosperity” in Laos, Soukan stressed their confessions weren’t forced by the authorities. Continue reading “Laos cracks down on social media critics”

May 16, 2016June 1, 2016

Three Lao Nationals Are Latest Victims of Forced Disappearances

Radio Free Asia: 16 May 2016

Two Lao nationals have been arrested upon returning home from Thailand where they were working, while a third has vanished, because they criticized the Lao government while abroad, their friends and relatives said.

Somphone Phimmasone, 29, his girlfriend Lod Thammavong, 30, and Soukane Chaithad, 32, returned to Laos in February to renew their passports, the sources said.

Police arrested Somphone and Lod at her home at Navatai village of Nongbok district in central Laos’ Khammouane province on March 5, said a relative of the couple, who declined to be named.

“At first, the police told us they had been arrested for possession of drugs, but two weeks later the policeman in charge of the jail informed us that they had been arrested for political campaigning,” he said. “[He] told us not to get involved if we didn’t want to get into trouble.”

Somphone and Lod were being held in the province’s Khamkhikai jail as of April, but later the police told their families that they had transferred the pair to the capital Vientiane for detention, the relative said. Continue reading “Three Lao Nationals Are Latest Victims of Forced Disappearances”

April 26, 2016June 1, 2016

Asean civil society meet dodges Laos for E Timor

Bangkok Post: 25 April 2016

In the second decade of the Asean civil society and people’s forum, the civic groups will meet not in the host country for the first time, but in non-Asean member East Timor instead. Every year before the Asean Summit, a conference known as the Asean Civil Society Conference/Asean People’s Forum (ACSC/APF), where hundreds of civil society activists from the Asean region gather to represent the voice of civil society, is held parallel to the official Asean Summit.

This year the theme of the conference, to be held in in August, is “Expanding People’s Solidarity for a Just and Inclusive Asean Community”. It will be held in East Timor’s Dili, according to Atnike Sigiro, a steering committee member of the Asean NGO mechanism created in 2005.

“It’s an effort by Asean civil society to reach out to people in Timor Leste, which soon will join Asean. The title also represents an expansion of solidarity among the people in the Asean region,” said Ms Sigiro from Forum-Asia. Continue reading “Asean civil society meet dodges Laos for E Timor”

April 25, 2016May 26, 2016

Une dictature pas très dérangeante

Le Courrier: 18 avril 2016

La république populaire du Laos ne tolère aucune protestation face à ses projets de barrages ou miniers . La coopérante Anne-Sophie Gindroz en a fait les frais en 2012. Elle signe un livre poignant.

Géographiquement pris en sandwich entre la Thaïlande et le Vietnam, le Laos est un pays qui fait peu parler de lui. Cette discrétion sur le plan international semble convenir au régime autoritaire en place qui continue à réprimer toute opposition impunément – notamment par des disparitions forcées.

Les simulacres d’élections législatives du 20 mars dernier n’ont trompé personne mais n’ont guère suscité de protestations de la part de la communauté internationale. Une situation qui a le don d’irriter Anne-Sophie Gindroz, ex-coopérante de l’œuvre d’entraide suisse Helvetas, qui a été expulsée du Laos en 2012. Un peu plus de trois ans après les faits, elle publie un livre1 qui retrace son travail sur place auprès des communautés locales chassées de leurs terres par le gouvernement «communiste» et relate les circonstances de son éviction. Continue reading “Une dictature pas très dérangeante”

April 23, 2016May 26, 2016

Mrs Angkana launches signature collection campaign to demand revival of Somchai’s case

Thai Visa News: 22 April 2016

Angkana Neelaphaichit-22 April 2016

BANGKOK: — The widow of missing Muslim lawyer Somchai Nilapaichit has launched a signature collection campaign to demand the revival of the enforced disappearance case of her husband.

Mrs Angkana Nilapaichit, a member of the human rights committee of the Law Council of Thailand, told Post Today Online that the campaign through the social media, www.change.org, which started a month ago has already collected about 17,000 signatures against her demand of at least 25,000 signatures.

Once the required signatures are collected, she said she would submit a petition accompanied by the list of signatures to Justice Minister Paiboon Kumchaya and six other persons to demand the revival of Mr Somchai’s case in an independent and transparent manner.

Somchai has disappeared without any traces about 12 years ago while he served as a defence lawyers for some of the suspected southern separatists. All the police officers charged with involvement in the lawyer’s disappearance have been acquitted.

Mrs Angkana said, besides the demand for the revival of the case, the signature campaign was intended to create public awareness about human rights, rights to safety and protection from enforced disappearance.

Note: The petition can be found here.

April 19, 2016June 1, 2016

Is Laos’ ASEAN Chairmanship a Threat to Southeast Asian Regionalism?

The Diplomat: 15 April 2016

Sombath Somphone (d.) en compagnie de l'archevêque sud-africain Desmund Tutu en 2006. Wikimedia Commons / Shui-Meng Ng — Sombath Somphone, seen in 2006 with Desmond Tutu. Wikimedia Commons

Laos is a country that is usually described in accordance with one of two narratives.

The first portrays a Buddhist Shangri-La — the ‘real,’ ‘hidden,’ and ‘untouched’ Indochina dreamed of in Western backpacker fantasies — while the second depicts a highly impoverished country in desperate need of foreign aid and technical assistance.

Both depictions have some merit. Laos is rich in Buddhist history and it is predominantly an agrarian-based society where the average life expectancy is just 66 years and Gross National Income per capita is under $5,000. But there is much more to Laos than Buddhism and poverty.

In a recent article by The Diplomat, for example, Luke Hunt highlighted how the coupling of Laos’ draconian media monitoring laws with the country’s current role as the 2016 ASEAN Chair has the potential to constrain international reporting on important transnational issues discussed at ASEAN meetings and conferences. Continue reading “Is Laos’ ASEAN Chairmanship a Threat to Southeast Asian Regionalism?”