Disappearance of Sombath Somphone: Time for Intervention by ASEAN?

By Tan Kwoh Jack

No. 014/2013 dated 24 January 2013. This is from the RSIS Commentaries are intended to provide timely and, where appropriate, policy relevant background and analysis of contemporary developments. S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, NTU to see the original go here

Synopsis

The disappearance of prominent Lao activist Sombath Somphone is garnering regional and international attention. With the signing of the ASEAN Human Rights Charter it is in the interest of ASEAN countries to engage more actively on the issue.

Commentary

ON 15 December 2012, the prominent Lao public intellectual Sombath Somphone mysteriously “disappeared”. Closed-circuit video footage released by the Lao authorities showed uniformed personnel in Vientiane stopping Sombath’s car before taking him away. Analysts believe that his disappearance is connected to his activist work in sustainable development, and that elements within the Lao government may be responsible for this incident. Sombath’s disappearance has garnered regional and international attention in the past month: three Members of Parliaments from Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines: Charles Santiago, Lily Wahid and Walden Bello made a special three-day trip to Vientiane to seek some answers from the Lao government. During the press conference in Bangkok afterwards, they rebuked the Lao administration for lacking in political will to resolve the issue. Consequently, they plan to collect the signatures of MPs in every ASEAN country to increase pressure on the Lao government. They will also be submitting a report to the ASEAN Inter-governmental Commission on Human Rights. Singaporean link The US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton is the latest and most prominent politician to publicly comment on the issue, calling on the Lao government to pursue a “transparent investigation”, and to “do everything in its power” to obtain Sombath’s return. Besides the MPs of the three countries other ASEAN members including Singapore might want to pay attention to this case. Sombath’s wife, Ng Shui Meng is a Singapore national. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said it is rendering consular assistance to Ms Ng. Sombath shares with Singapore an active interest in strengthening sustainable development as one of ASEAN’s key objectives and has made significant contributions in this area. The US- educated Sombath pioneered the use of participatory methods in poverty alleviation in Laos and is a winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award – commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize of Asia.

Implications on ASEAN Human Rights Charter

With the signing of the ASEAN Human Rights Charter (AHRC) in November last year, ASEAN members may find it increasingly difficult to remain silent on issues pertaining to human rights. These issues emerging from within ASEAN will start to bring into question the efficacy of the AHRC. This suggests that ASEAN’s long- standing principle of non-interference will have to evolve into something more expressive, if not more “interventionist”.

Lao inaction on Sombath’s case may affect the credibility of the AHRC and the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights. Sombath’s case is a good opportunity for ASEAN members to take a collective stand and further strengthen the Charter. This will address the initial accusations made by non-government organisations that the Charter is “not worthy of its name”.

Officials may worry that any statement that an ASEAN government makes in regard to human rights, will inevitably bring to the fore its own record. This is yet another reflection of the blurring lines between the international and the domestic. For example should a country articulate a more assertive foreign policy of human rights – under the aegis of the AHRC – it may have to take on parallel positions related to civil society and liberties within the state. At times, it may even find itself having to justify its domestic policies to the other ASEAN neighbours, as Myanmar did in recent years.

A more interventionist ASEAN?

That said, Sombath’s disappearance is as much a human rights issue as one of the rule of law and due process. In recent years Singapore and Laos have ramped up bilateral economic and political relations. The air route between Singapore and Laos has re-opened, expanding tourism exponentially. Successive trade delegations have brought Singapore’s government-linked companies and private enterprises into Laos. Laos is a popular destination for Singapore volunteers engaged in community development projects. Last year, the animal rights group Animal Concerns Research and Education Society set up a research and education centre in Laos to combat the problem of Lao bear bile products being sold in Singapore. This reflects the growing endeavour of Singaporeans to undertake community projects in developing countries. All these point to the expanding presence of Singaporeans in Laos, and invariably, violations of the rule of law and due processes “over there” will, in one way or another begin to concern Singapore. At the regional level, pressures on ASEAN to take a more interventionist stance on violations of human rights will also increase with the adoption of the ASEAN Human Rights Charter.

Tan Kwoh Jack is an Associate Research Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.

January 24, 2013July 28, 2015

Laos under spotlight

Laos under international spotlight in search for land rights activist

The Guardian: 24 January 2013

Sombath Somphone disappeared a month ago after stopping at a police checkpoint, yet officials deny knowing his whereabouts.

Though it rarely makes international headlines, Laos has been in the spotlight for the past month. One of its most well-respected activists has gone missing after stopping at a police checkpoint. His disappearance has prompted the Laos government to suggest he was “kidnapped”, but rights groups suspect he may have been abducted after campaigning against land grabs.

Sombath Somphone, 60, disappeared on the night of 15 December in the capital, Vientiane, and was last seen by his wife, Ng Shui Meng, who was driving ahead of him as the couple returned home in separate cars. CCTV footage shows the activist stopping at a police post, leaving his vehicle, and his Jeep being driven away by someone else. Later, a pickup truck with its lights flashing arrives, Sombath gets in, and he and two other men drive off.

Although Sombath has not been seen or heard from since the checkpoint stop, the government insists it has nothing to do with his disappearance.

In an official statement carried by the state news agency KPL soon after Sombath went missing, a government spokesman said he may have been “kidnapped perhaps because of a personal conflict or a conflict in business”, and that the pickup truck in question was driven by two men “not possible to identify”. Their vehicle, the statement added, “went away to an unknown destination”.

Sombath’s family and friends say he had no such conflicts and that no ransom has been demanded. Continue reading “Laos under spotlight”

January 19, 2013July 28, 2015

A diplomatic nightmare

Where’s Sombath? Laos scrambles to manage a diplomatic nightmare

Asian Correspondent: 18 January 2013

Rarely the centre of regional media attention, Laos is more often associated with being “tiny” and “land-locked” but this week the Southeast Asian nation has been forced to perform some diplomatic acrobatics to manage a growing storm around the disappearance of activist Sombath Somphone.

Anyone who lives there will know that a safety net is always recommended when Laos walks the diplomatic tightrope.

Questions around the disappearance of a much-respected activist and campaigner for sustainable development are coming thick and fast since his abduction on a busy street in the Lao capital of Vientiane. But a more unusual sight for locals and observers is watching the Lao Government crunching through their PR gears.

Laos has been earmarked as the next frontier market in Southeast Asia, following in the footsteps of Vietnam and Burma and the abduction of a leading voice in the NGO community has raised new concerns. Continue reading “A diplomatic nightmare”

January 18, 2013June 6, 2017

BBC reports US concern

Sombath Somphone: US concern over missing Laos campaigner

BBC: 17 January 2013

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged Laos to investigate the disappearance of a well-known social activist who went missing last month.

Security camera footage shows Sombath Somphone being taken away by unidentified men after he was stopped by police in the capital Vientiane.

Rights groups fear that he was abducted by elements associated with the Communist authorities.

But the government in Laos says it knows nothing of his whereabouts.

Although he is not a political figure, Mr Sombath was a prominent campaigner who promoted fair land rights for small farmers, which is a sensitive issue in Laos, the BBC’s Nga Pham reports from Bangkok.

“We call upon the Lao government to pursue a transparent investigation of this incident and to do everything in its power to bring about an immediate and safe return home to his family,” Hillary Clinton urged in a statement.

Laos is one of the world’s few Communist countries where all land belongs to the state – and there have been complaints about land grabs and abuses by local government, our correspondent reports.

Last week three lawmakers from Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines visited Vientiane and concluded that they were not satisfied with explanations they had received about the disappearance from officials.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21055404

January 16, 2013July 28, 2015

UK Financial Times: Laos under pressure

Laos under pressure to step up probe

Financial Times: 16 January 2013

The Lao government is coming under increased international pressure to step up its promised investigation into the disappearance of a prominent local civic leader, as concerns increase about state involvement in the case.

MPs from other Asean member countries said on Wednesday that Laos’s ruling communist party “clearly had no desire and no political will” to resolve the mystery and urged the government to extend its investigation to the top levels of Laos’s military.

This follows public expressions of concern from the US and other western governments and UN agencies over the case.

The MPs spoke ahead of an expected statement by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton urging Laos to take more action on the case. The three MPs, from the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, visited Vientiane, the Lao capital, where Sombath Somphone went missing on December 15 while driving home one evening from his office. Continue reading “UK Financial Times: Laos under pressure”

January 11, 2013July 28, 2015

Former Prime Minister of Thailand expresses concern

Anand urges Vientiane to find missing activist

The Nation , 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.” Continue reading “Former Prime Minister of Thailand expresses concern”

January 10, 2013June 6, 2017

The latest article fom New York Times

With Laos Disappearance, Signs of a Liberalization in Backslide

New York Times: 10 January 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 U.S.-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 backwards.

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). Continue reading “The latest article fom New York Times”

January 9, 2013July 28, 2015

Wall Street Journal – Is Laos Losing Its Way?

The Wall Street Journal: 08 January 2013

The disappearance of a community leader threatens Vientiane’s recent progress.

By Murray Hiebert

The year 2012 marked a coming of age for tiny landlocked Laos. In July Hillary Clinton became the first U.S. secretary of state since the 1950s to visit the country. The World Trade Organization formally voted in October to allow Laos into the trade grouping after years of negotiations. In early November, Laos’s capital Vientiane hosted the Asia-Europe Meeting, which was attended by dozens of world leaders and senior officials, including the prime minister of China and the president of the European Council. Laos’estimated economic growth of 8.3% last year likely made it Southeast Asia’s top economic performer.

But all this good news is dissipating like mist on the Mekong because of the country’s suspicious response to the disappearance of an internationally recognized development leader. On Dec. 15, Sombath Somphone was driving on the outskirts of Vientiane when he was stopped in his Jeep by police and then transferred by non-uniformed men into another vehicle, as photo and video evidence from that day shows. No one has seen him since.

The Laos government has said it has no idea what happened to Mr. Sombath. Its official news agency speculated that his disappearance may have been prompted by a business or personal dispute. But diplomatic sources in Vientiane who have seen the footage of Mr. Sombath’s roadside confrontation are convinced that he was taken and is being held by Laos’s security apparatus.

For a country that relies on foreign assistance for roughly 70% of its budget, the agronomist’s disappearance—and the government’s subsequent unwillingness to forthrightly address it—has become a major headache. Few in Laos have built bridges between the foreign and local development communities as effectively as Sombath Somphone.

The oldest of eight siblings, he grew up in a poor rice farming family in southern Laos at the height of the Vietnam War. In the early 1970s, he received a scholarship to study education and agriculture at the University of Hawaii.

I first met Mr. Sombath after he graduated in the late 1970s. I had worked in Laos with a small development agency from 1975, when communist forces seized control of the government, until early 1978. Mr. Sombath wanted to know whether he should return home to use his skills to aid the country’s subsistence farmers. Many of his friends warned him not to go back, arguing that the new communist leaders would not tolerate a U.S.-educated agronomist working directly with Lao farmers. Continue reading “Wall Street Journal – Is Laos Losing Its Way?”

January 7, 2013July 28, 2015

UK Financial Times on Sombath's disappearance

Laos pressed on activist disappearance

Financial Times, 06 Jan 2012

The UN and some western governments are preparing to put fresh questions to the Lao government over the mysterious disappearance in mid-December of a prominent education and health campaigner, after Vientiane late last week rejected suggestions by the UN of state involvement in the case.

In a statement to the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Laos denied knowledge of the whereabouts of Sombath Somphone, 60, and said he had not been taken into police custody, as widely reported, but rather may have been kidnapped because of a “personal conflict”.

UN human rights officials, as well as US and European governments, have expressed concern in recent weeks that the activist is being held by the Lao authorities.

Closed circuit video footage from police security cameras showed Mr Sombath, founder of a local non-government organisation Padetc, being stopped by traffic police at a roadside post while he was driving home from work in Vientiane, the Lao capital, in mid-December.

Mr Sombath was following his Singaporean wife in a separate car but never arrived home. The government has denied he was taken into custody at the stop, which they said was a “routine” check, but grainy CCTV footage shows a man resembling Mr Sombath being driven away by uniformed Lao officials.

Vientiane-based diplomats at the weekend expressed doubt about official denials of involvement in Mr Sombath’s disappearance and said their embassies were set to convey further concerns about the case. “We are considering the next move, and it could well be a démarche,” said one western diplomat. Continue reading “UK Financial Times on Sombath's disappearance”

January 4, 2013July 28, 2015

"My husband is not a dissident"

The wife of Sombath Somphone was interviewed on Australian radio today, emphasizing that her husband is a development worker who is interested in helping his country, and that he has always worked closely with the government.

Prominent Lao activist still missing

ABC Radio, 04 January 2013

This weekend marks three weeks since the disappearance of the respected Lao community leader, teacher and social activist Sombath Somphone.Well known in the region, he received the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for his work.

Sombath Somphone has not been heard of since being taken away from a police checkpoint in the capital, Vientiane.

The government has denied any involvement, hinting at a possible business or personal conflict as the reason for his disappearance.

Presenter: Tom Fayle

Speaker: Ng Shui Meng, who’s high-profile activist husband Sombath Somphone has been missing in Laos for almost three weeks

NG: I have not heard any news apart from the government statement which was issued on the 19th and a visit to the police station I have not heard anything since.

FAYLE: Now have the authorities been maintaining contact with you?

NG: The police department has called me for a short interview on the 26th of December and since then they have not been in contact with me.

FAYLE: Now would you describe your husband as a dissident in any form?

NG: No my husband is not a dissident, he is a very low-profile social development worker interested in helping the country, teaching young people in community service, empowering them, teaching them leadership skills, working with the monks and working with students. He is not at all an activist or a dissident in any way. He has worked closely with the government and with approval of government for every project he has done. So he’s not at all an activist, he always believes that as a Lao citizen he wants to support the government to help develop the country. Continue reading “"My husband is not a dissident"”