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ASEAN in Laos: Challenges of Leadership, Human Rights & Democracy

Press conference held at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Thailand on 31 August, 2016, Bangkok 

RFA-FCCT-2016

Panelists included (click on link for their presentation):

  • Shui Meng Ng, Spouse of Sombath Somphone
  • Walden Bello, ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights
  • Laurent Meillan, Acting Regional Representative of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

With moderation by Phil Robertson, Deputy Director of the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch.

Video of the press conference is available in three segments: One, two & three.

The following press briefings were also distributed:

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ขบวนการหนุ่มสาวลาวร้องหน้า UN ปล่อย 3 คนลาวที่ถูกจับเพราะวิจารณ์รัฐ

ประชาไทย: 31 สิงหา 2016

Prachathai-UN-2016

ขบวนการหนุ่มสาวเพื่อประชาธิปไตยแอคชั่นหน้า UN ในไทย เรียกร้องรัฐบาลลาวหยุดละเมิดสิทธิ ปล่อยตัวสามคนลาวที่ถูกจับเพราะวิพากษ์รัฐผ่านอินเทอร์เน็ต

หน้าองค์กรสหประชาชาติ (UN) ขบวนการหนุ่มสาวลาวเพื่อประชาธิปไตย จำนวน 4 คน นำโดย ตามใจ ไคยะวงศ์ (Tamchay Khayavowg) ยื่นหนังสือต่อสหประชาชาติและจัดกิจกรรมชูป้ายเพื่อเรียกร้องให้รัฐบาลลาวปล่อยตัวสามคนลาวที่ถูกจับเมื่อวันที่ 5 มี.ค. 2559 ในคดีวิพากษ์วิจารณ์รัฐบาลลาวบนสื่อสังคมออนไลน์ โดยแผ่นป้ายมีข้อความเรียกร้องให้คืนเสรีภาพและหยุดการละเมิดสิทธิมนุษยชนในลาว “Please return to freedom” “Stop! Human Rights violations in Laos, FREE LAO” Continue reading “ขบวนการหนุ่มสาวลาวร้องหน้า UN ปล่อย 3 คนลาวที่ถูกจับเพราะวิจารณ์รัฐ”

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လာအိုုႏိုုင္ငံရွိလူ႔အခြင့္အေရးခ်ိဳးေဖာက္မွဳမ်ားကိုု ကိုုင္တြယ္ေျဖရွင္းျခင္း

အာဆီယံထိပ္သီးေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားအစည္းအေ၀းတြင္ ေပ်ာက္ကြယ္လ်က္ရွိေသာ  ေခါင္းေဆာင္ Sombath Somphone အေျကာင္းကိုု အေလးထားေဆြးေႏြးသင့္,လြတ္လပ္မွဳကိုု ျငင္းဆိုုျခင္း

ဘန္ေကာက၊္ ၃၁ ရက္ေန႔၊ ျသဂုုတ္လ၊ ၂၀၁၆။ ဗီယန္က်င္းျမိဳ့တြင္ က်င္းပမည့္ အာဆီယံေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား အစည္းအေ၀းမတိုင္မီညေနတြင္ တရားမ၀င္ထိန္းသိမ္းအက်ဥ္းခ်ျခင္း၊ ဖမ္းဆီးခ်ဳပ္ေႏွာင္ျခင္းျဖစ္စဥ္မ်ား အပါအ၀င္ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ခ်ိဳးေဖာက္အျကမ္းဖက္မွဳမ်ားကို ေဆြးေႏြးအေျဖရွာရန္ လာအိုႏိုင္ငံအစိုးရအား လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးဆိုင္ရာအဖြဲ႔မ်ားက ေတာင္းဆိုလိုက္ပါသည္။ စက္တင္ဘာလ ၆ ရက္ေန႔မွ ၈ ရက္ေန႔ အထိျပဳလုပ္မည့္ အာဆီယံအစည္းအေ၀းတြင္ ကမၻာႏိုင္ငံေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားသည္ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးဆိုင္ရာ ျပသာနာမ်ားကို ေဆြးေႏြးအေျဖရွာႏိုင္ျကမည္ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ ႏိုင္ငံ့ေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားအေနျဖင့္ လူ႔အခြင့္ အေရးႏွင့္ရပိုင္ခြင့္မ်ား၊ မီဒီယာလြတ္လပ္ခြင့္၊ ဒီမိုကေရစီ၊ ဘာသာေရးလြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ႏွင့္ စီးပြားေရး ပြင့္လင္း ျမင္သာမွဳ တိုင္းတာေရးစံႏွဳန္းအဆင့္မ်ားတြင္ လာအိုႏိုင္ငံအား ေအာက္ဆံုးအဆင့္ေရာက္ေစသည့္ ညွဥ္းပန္းႏွိပ္စက္မတရားျပဳမွဳမ်ားကို မျပဳလုပ္ရန္ လာအိုအစိုးရအား ဖိအားေပးသင့္သည္။

Logo-Sombath Initiative

ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ၊ ဘန္ေကာက္ျမိဳ႔ရွိ ႏိုင္ငံျခားသတင္းေထာက္မ်ားကလပ္တြင္ The Sombath Initiative က ဦးစီးျပီး ယေန႔က်င္းပျပဳလုပ္သည့္ သတင္းစာရွင္းလင္းပြဲတြင္ အရပ္ဘက္အဖြဲ႔အစည္းေခါင္းေဆာင္ Sombath Somphone ရုတ္တရက္ေပ်ာက္ကြယ္သြားမွဳ၊ လာအိုႏိုင္ငံ၏ဒီမိုကေရစီႏွင့္ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ဆိုင္ရာတားျမစ္ခ်က္မ်ား၊ လြတ္လပ္စြာ ဆနၵထုတ္ေဖာ္ခြင့္အားနည္းျခင္း၊ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးဆုိင္ရာ ကတိက၀တ္မ်ားကို ေဖာ္ေဆာင္ရန္ပ်က္ကြက္ျခင္းႏွင့္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာအေထာက္အပံ့မ်ားနွင့္ ရင္းႏွီး ျမွဳပ္ႏွံမွဳအက်ိဳးသက္ေရာက္မွဳမ်ား ပါ၀င္သည့္စာတမ္းမ်ားကို ထုတ္ျပန္ခဲ့ျကသည္။
Continue reading “လာအိုုႏိုုင္ငံရွိလူ႔အခြင့္အေရးခ်ိဳးေဖာက္မွဳမ်ားကိုု ကိုုင္တြယ္ေျဖရွင္းျခင္း”

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Obama urged to press Laos on human rights at regional summit

Reuters: 31 August 2016

Activists have called on U.S. President Barack Obama to press Laos on its human rights record on issues such as illegal land concessions and forced evictions, when he visits the Communist country next week.

Obama is due to attend a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the capital Vientiane, becoming the first U.S. president to visit Laos.

Campaigners urged Obama to use a bilateral meeting with Laos President Bounnhang Vorachith to discuss issues ranging from environmental contamination to the fate of prominent Lao human rights activist Sombath Somphone, who disappeared in 2012.

“We see this visit to Laos as a human rights test for President Obama and his administration,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division.

“Are they prepared to come to Southeast Asia and speak publicly about the disappearance of such a prominent person as Sombath Somphone and talk about the ongoing rights violations that are taking place in Laos?” Robertson asked.

Sombath, a U.S.-educated activist focusing on rural development, went missing in Vientiane on Dec. 15, 2012. A video previously released by the authorities shows him being stopped at a police checkpoint before being led into a pickup truck.

Laos maintains the state is not involved in Sombath’s disappearance and police are still investigating, said Sombath’s wife Shui Meng Ng, adding that she has not had an update from police in more than two years.

Sombath’s disappearance and harassment of civil society members has had a “chilling effect” on freedom of expression, with many self-censoring over fears they will be punished, said Laurent Meillan, the acting regional representative of the U.N. Office for the High Commission of Human Rights.

Meillan also expressed concern about large scale development projects and land concessions impacting the rights of local communities.

According to HRW’s Robertson, the Lao government told civil society groups ahead of the ASEAN meeting that it would not permit various subjects to be discussed.

These include Sombath’s disappearance, hydropower projects, land issues or the rights of indigenous and LGBT people, he said.

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Varias ONGs piden a Laos un mayor compromiso con los derechos humanos

El Diario: 31 Agosto 2016

Varias ONGs pidieron hoy a Laos un mayor compromiso con los derechos humanos e instaron a los países donantes que aborden el tema en la Cumbre de la Asociación de Naciones del Sudeste Asiático (ASEAN) que se celebra en Vientián la próxima semana con la asistencia del presidente de EEUU, Barack Obama.

Entre las vulneraciones, las organizaciones garantes de derechos humanos destacaron las desapariciones forzadas de activistas, la confiscación de tierras, la discriminación de las minorías, el control de los medios de comunicación, y la nula libertad de prensa y las detenciones arbitrarias.

En diciembre del 2012, el activista laosiano Sombath Somphone fue secuestrado en una de las principales avenidas de la capital de Laos tras recibir el alto en un control de tráfico, según se puede apreciar en imágenes registradas por cámaras de seguridad que logró la mujer del activista, Shui Meng. Continue reading “Varias ONGs piden a Laos un mayor compromiso con los derechos humanos”

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Human rights under scrutiny in Laos ahead of ASEAN meet

Anadolu Agency: 31 August 2016

BANGKOK, THAILAND - AUGUST 31: An activist holds a protest in front of the Laos Embassy in Bangkok calling on the government to stop Human Rights violations.
BANGKOK, THAILAND – AUGUST 31: An activist holds a protest in front of the Laos Embassy in Bangkok calling on the government to stop Human Rights violations.

One week before Laos hosts a summit of Southeast Asian leaders, international rights groups are demanding that Thailand’s sleepy northern neighbor improve its human rights situation.

But while advocates have underscored the state of human rights in the country, the wife of a prominent civil society leader who disappeared after being arrested in Vientiane in December 2012 had more personal concerns Wednesday. Continue reading “Human rights under scrutiny in Laos ahead of ASEAN meet”

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Tackle Human Rights Abuses in Laos

ASEAN Meeting Should Highlight Disappeared Leader Sombath Somphone, Denial of Liberties 

(Bangkok, August 31, 2016) – On the eve of the annual ASEAN leaders summit in Vientiane, human rights and advocacy groups called upon the Lao PDR Government to commit to address its widespread violations of human rights, including instances of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention. Visiting world leaders have a unique opportunity to publicly raise human rights concerns during the ASEAN summit in Vientiane from September 6-8. They should press the Lao government to cease the abuses that have consistently placed Laos at the bottom of rig hts and development indexes measuring rights, press freedom, democracy, religious freedom, and economic transparency.

ALogo-Sombath Initiativet the press conference organized today by The Sombath Initiative at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand in Bangkok, the groups released briefing papers on forcibly disappeared civil society leader Sombath Somphone, Laos’ restrictions on democracy and human rights, lack freedom of expression, failure to meet human rights obligations, and impacts of foreign aid and investment. Continue reading “Tackle Human Rights Abuses in Laos”

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Repression in Laos Goes Under the Spotlight

TheNewsLens: 29 August 2016

TheNewsLens-2016Human rights and democracy advocates are using next week’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Vientiane, Laos, to draw attention to the country’s authoritarian regime.

Charles Santiago is a Malaysian Member of Parliament and Chairperson of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR).

In an op-ed published in the Bangkok Post, Santiago slams Laos’ communist government for being a “regional leader” in repression. Continue reading “Repression in Laos Goes Under the Spotlight”

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Amnesty International: Où est Sombath ?

Amnesty InternationalAmnesty International: 30 August 2016

Alors que le monde entier célèbre la Journée internationale des victimes de disparition forcée, les autorités laotiennes doivent mener dans les plus brefs délais une enquête approfondie et efficace sur l’enlèvement et la disparition forcée présumée de Sombath Somphone, a déclaré Amnesty International mardi 30 août 2016.

Sombath Somphone, membre respecté de la société civile laotienne, a été arrêté par la police de la route le 15 décembre 2012 et emmené dans un pickup. On ignore toujours où il se trouve, les autorités n’ont pas tenu sa famille informée de l’affaire et aucune enquête crédible n’a été menée sur sa disparition forcée.

« La semaine prochaine, Barack Obama sera le premier président des États-Unis à se rendre au Laos. Il doit saisir cette occasion rare pour exprimer sa préoccupation quant à la situation des droits humains dans ce pays connu pour être très fermé, notamment en demandant aux autorités “Où est Sombath ?” », a déclaré T. Kumar, directeur en charge du travail international de plaidoyer au sein d’Amnesty International États-Unis. Continue reading “Amnesty International: Où est Sombath ?”

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Amnesty International: #WhereIsSombath?

Amnesty InternationalAmnesty International: 30 August 2016

As the International Day of the Disappeared is marked around the world, the Laos authorities must promptly, thoroughly and effectively investigate the abduction and suspected enforced disappearance of Sombath Somphone, Amnesty International said today.

On 15 December 2012, Sombath Somphone, a leading member of Lao civil society, was stopped by traffic police and taken away in a pick-up truck. His whereabouts remain unknown, his family has not been kept informed by the authorities, and there has been no credible investigation into his enforced disappearance.

“Next week, Barack Obama will become the first US President to visit Laos. He must seize this rare opportunity to raise concerns about the human rights situation in the notoriously closed country, including by asking the authorities, ‘Where is Sombath?’” said T. Kumar, Amnesty International USA’s International Advocacy Director. Continue reading “Amnesty International: #WhereIsSombath?”