Overland Journal: Spring 2014
The arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorisation, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law.
– Article 2, The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance
The last time Ng Shui Meng saw her husband, Sombath Somphone, alive was early in the evening of Saturday, 15 December 2012.
Sombath was driving his old jeep home. Shui Meng, who was travelling in her own vehicle in front of his, noticed him being stopped at a police post on Thadeua Road, a main thoroughfare in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Having your car stopped by the police is not uncommon in Laos. Usually it involves a simple identification check. Sometimes, police attempt to shake down drivers for a small bribe to supplement their meagre wages. As such, Shui Meng thought nothing of it and drove on home, expecting Sombath to join her later.
When her husband didn’t arrive for dinner she began to worry. She searched the vicinity of the police post where he was last seen and also visited Vientiane’s hospitals on the assumption he might have had an accident. She called his phone but was diverted to his message bank.
A fluent Lao speaker, Shui Meng reported Sombath missing to police the next day. She and Sombath’s family also rechecked the city’s hospitals and retraced the previous night’s events along Thadeua Road. It was then they noticed the Chinese-funded CCTV cameras mounted at various points along the road, one of which overlooked the police post where Sombath was last seen. Continue reading “Disappeared in Laos”