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Two years on, Laos activist still missing

Al Jazeera: 12 December 2014

Many suspect it was Sombath Somphone’s work empowering communities across Laos that led to his enforced disappearance.

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Sombath Somphone won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 2005 [AP]
In August 2005, in front of an audience in Manila, Lao development worker Sombath Somphone received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for community leadership.

Known as Asia’s Nobel Prize, it showed that Sombath’s work was appreciated not just by the people of Laos but across the region.

The award recognised Sombath’s “hopeful efforts to promote sustainable development in Laos by training and motivating its young people to become a generation of leaders”.

But much of that hope has now been lost. Rather than mentoring a new generation of Lao community leaders, Sombath is missing – a victim of enforced disappearance – and Lao civil society is fractured and fearful.

An enforced disappearance takes place when a person is arrested, detained or abducted by the state or agents acting for the state, who then deny that the person is being held or conceal their fate or whereabouts, placing them outside the protection of the law.

And this serious human rights violation, recognised as an international crime since the aftermath of World War II, is ongoing as long as Sombath’s fate and whereabouts remain unknown.

Continue reading “Two years on, Laos activist still missing”

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ถ้าโลกนี้ไม่มีการอุ้มหาย: การแสดงพลังของคนรุ่นใหม่ ผ่านวาระ 2 ปีการหายตัวไปของอ้ายสมบัด

Thai PBS: 12 ธันวาคม 2557

ถ้าโลกนี้ไม่มีการอุ้มหาย: การแสดงพลังของคนรุ่นใหม่ ผ่านวาระ 2 ปีการหายตัวไปของอ้ายสมบัด

สองปีแล้ว ‘สมบัด สมพอน’ ก็ยังไม่กลับมา สมควรแก่เวลาที่คนรุ่นใหม่จะร่วมกันสร้างสังคมที่ใฝ่ฝัน, สังคมแห่งสันติภาพ?

นี่คือบทสัมภาษณ์คนรุ่นใหม่กลุ่ม Sombath Somphone and Beyond Project

12 ธันวาคม 2557, บันทึกไว้ด้วยจิตคารวะ

Continue reading “ถ้าโลกนี้ไม่มีการอุ้มหาย: การแสดงพลังของคนรุ่นใหม่ ผ่านวาระ 2 ปีการหายตัวไปของอ้ายสมบัด”

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Two years marked at FCCT in Bangkok

FCCT-2014-12-11To mark two years since the enforced disappearance of Sombath Somphone, a press conference was held at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Thailand on December 11th.

The event also included the  launch of the Sombath Initiative, as well as the release of the International Commission of Jurists’ “Missed Opportunities: Recommendations for Investigating the Disappearance of Sombath Somphone.”

Video of the event is available here. Remarks were given by: 1) Angkhana Neelapaijit from the Justice for Peace Foundation, 2) Sam Zarifi from ICJ, 3) Matilda Bogner from OHCHR, and 4) Ng Shui Meng. (11 December 2014)

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Wife of Missing Lao Civil Society Leader Vows to Keep Pushing For Answers

Radio Free Asia: 12 December 2014

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Ng Shui-Meng, wife of Sombath Somphone, talks about her husband’s disappearance at a press conference in Bangkok, Dec. 11, 2014.

The wife of a missing prominent civil society leader in Laos vowed to continue pushing the authorities for answers over the disappearance of her husband, who vanished under mysterious circumstances in the capital Vientiane two years ago. Ng Shui-Meng, the wife of Sombath Somphone, said she would continue to highlight her husband’s case “until the end of my life.” “I will not give up asking, looking for and requesting the Lao government, officials and police to please give our family sympathy and give us answers soon, because after Sombath’s disappearance, we felt pain and our lives became difficult,” she said at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand in Bangkok on Thursday. “However, I am committed to looking for Sombath until the end of my life if I don’t get the answers.” Continue reading “Wife of Missing Lao Civil Society Leader Vows to Keep Pushing For Answers”

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En Asie du Sud-Est, la liste des militants "disparus" s'allonge

RTL Info: 12 Décembre 2014 SM-FCCT-02
Deux ans après la disparition de Sombath Somphone, célèbre militant laotien, sa femme se désespère de savoir ses ravisseurs toujours impunis. Un cas loin d’être isolé en Asie du Sud-Est, où l’enlèvement est fréquemment utilisé pour imposer le silence aux contestataires.

“Faire disparaître quelqu’un est un crime particulièrement cruel. C’est très difficile de vivre avec cette inconnue”, explique à l’AFP lors d’un passage à Bangkok Ng Shui-Meng, Singaporienne à la voix douce, et qui vit au Laos depuis 30 ans.

Sous ce régime communiste autoritaire qui s’ouvre timidement ces dernières années, la disparition, le 15 décembre 2012, du fondateur de l’ONG Participatory Development Training Center (PADETC) a profondément choqué la société civile.

Mais aussi la communauté internationale: des personnalités telles que le secrétaire d’Etat américain John Kerry, le sud-Africain Desmond Tutu ou Hillary Clinton ont réclamé une enquête. Car dans le cas de Sombath, l’enlèvement fait peu de doutes.

Des images prises par des caméras de vidéosurveillance le montrent en effet s’éloignant d’un poste de police avec deux individus non identifiés dans les rues de la capitale Ventiane.

Depuis ce jour, son nom est venu s’ajouter à une liste déjà longue de “disparus” de la région. Continue reading “En Asie du Sud-Est, la liste des militants "disparus" s'allonge”

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Lao govt condemned for failure to investigate disappearance of prominent Lao civil society worker

Prachathai: 12 December 2014

Thaweeporn Kummetha

Two years after the abduction of the prominent, internationally acclaimed Lao development worker Sombath Somphone by Lao state agents, the Lao government has done very little to find the truth, experts say. Meanwhile, the disappearance and lack of justice has effectively created a climate of fear which has worsened the human rights situation in Laos.

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Sombath Somphone (Photo courtesy of Sombath.org)

“Today marks 726 days, four days short of two years, since Sombath has been taken away from me and my family,” Shui Meng Ng, the wife of Sombath, said at a seminar ‘Sombath Somphone Missing for Two Years’ in Bangkok on Thursday. “Even after the 726 days, the shock, the pain, the anguish have not lessened. In fact, the anxiety has grown with each passing day. Some people sometimes ask me ‘Do you think Sombath is still alive?’ My answer is ‘I can only hope that he is still alive’. Without that hope, I will not have the strength to get up each day”

On 15 December 2012, CCTV at a police checkpoint in Vientiane recorded footage that shows that state agents abducted Sombath at the checkpoint. His car was stopped and then he was escorted into a truck. No one has seen him since. Continue reading “Lao govt condemned for failure to investigate disappearance of prominent Lao civil society worker”

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Dear Sombath…from Amnesty International

Amnesty InternationalAmnesty International: 12 December 2012

Ref: ASA 26/002/2014

Sombath Somphone

UNKNOWN ADDRESS

Dear Sombath,

Two years after you disappeared on the evening of 15 December 2012, we, directors from across the global Amnesty International movement, write to express our deepest hopes for your safe return.

We have all seen the CCTV footage of your disappearance outside a police post on Thadeua Road in Vientiane. This evidence strongly indicates involvement of agents of the Lao state, whether through direct perpetration, or through support or complicity.

Yet for two years, the Lao government has denied arresting you and denies any responsibility for your disappearance. They have failed to conduct a prompt, thorough, competent and impartial investigation. They have refused other countries’ offers of external assistance, including analysis of the original CCTV footage.

We are deeply disappointed that the Lao authorities have not lived up to their human rights obligations. Laos signed the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (CPED) in September 2008. It has not yet ratified the Convention, but it is expected to act according to the letter and spirit of its provisions. Laos is also a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which provides that governments must provide an ‘effective remedy’ for violations of rights guaranteed by the Covenant, including the rights to liberty and security of person. Continue reading “Dear Sombath…from Amnesty International”

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Into thin air: Southeast Asia's growing ranks of disappeared

The Daily Mail: 12 December 2014

Two years after Sombath Somphone vanished, the Laotian activist’s wife says his abductors enjoy impunity –- an ugly reality across a region where powerful business interests and murky state actors stand accused of routinely “disappearing” opponents.

Sombath disappeared from the streets of the capital of Laos, Vientiane, after he was pulled over at a police checkpoint.

The disappearances continue in the region: from a Cambodian teenager last seen covered in blood during a labour protest, to an ethnic minority activist who vanished in Thailand after confronting national park officials.

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Ng Shui-Meng, the wife of missing Laotian activist Sombath Somphone, says his abductors enjoy impunity ¿ an ugly reality across a region where powerful business interests and murky state actors stand accused of routinely “disappearing” opponents ©Christophe Archambault (AFP)

The case of Sombath — an award-winning champion of sustainable development but one who avoided direct confrontation — horrified civil society in Laos, a one-party communist state slowing emerging from decades of isolation.

His disappearance on December 15, 2012 stood out partly because the evidence pointing to abduction was so compelling — and also because a stream of international figures called for his safe return including Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Desmond Tutu.

“The crime of disappearance is particularly cruel,” Sombath’s wife Ng Shui-Meng, a soft-spoken Singaporean who lived in Laos with him, told AFP in Bangkok.

“It’s very difficult to live with the unknown.” Continue reading “Into thin air: Southeast Asia's growing ranks of disappeared”

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Magsaysay is asking: Where is Sombath?

Ramon Magsaysay Foundation: 12 December 2014

#WhereIsSombath: RMAF marks 2 years of RM Awardees’ disappearance

Magsaysay-LogoWhere is Sombath?

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) and the community of Magsaysay Awardees had been asking this question for two years now, since RM Awardee Sombath Somphone disappeared in his native Laos.

Somphone received the Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 2005 in recognition of “his hopeful efforts to promote sustainable development in Laos by training and motivating its young people to become a generation of leaders.”

He was last seen at around 5:00 p. m. on December 15, 2012 when he left the offices of the Participatory Development Learning Center in Vientiane to go home. He was in his own car; his wife Shui Meng was in another. Footage from CCTV cameras showed that Somphone’s car was stopped at a police outpost, with the Magsaysay awardee leaving his vehicle and another person driving his jeep away. Later, a pick-up truck arrived, Somphone got in, and he and two other men drove off. He did not reach his home, and his family has had no news of him since then.

A few days after the disappearance, the Magsaysay Awards community began sending emails and messages to support Somphone’s family and to ask: “Where is Sombath?” Continue reading “Magsaysay is asking: Where is Sombath?”