The Straights Times: 17 December 2103
![Remembering Sombath Somphone outside the Lao embassy in Bangkok on Sunday Dec 15 - one year after his disappearance. -- ST PHOTO: NIRMAL GHOSH](https://sombathdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/nisombath171e.jpg?resize=525%2C298)
By Nirmal Ghosh, Indochina Bureau Chief In Bangkok
It has been a year, but Ms Ng Shui Meng still momentarily tenses whenever the phone rings. Twelve months have passed, yet there is still no trace of or information on her husband Sombath Somphone, who disappeared in Laos on Dec 15 last year. The incident was recorded on a CCTV camera but to date remains unsolved.
Given that Mr Sombath, internationally recognised for his work with farming communities, was pulled over by police that evening, Laos is under pressure from foreign governments to give an explanation. On the first anniversary of the disappearance last Sunday, the civil society organisation Mr Sombath founded held its annual fair in Vientiane. If the practice continues, it will be an annual reminder of that fateful evening.
Hours later, a US State Department statement said Washington remained “deeply concerned over the fate of Sombath Somphone, one of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic’s most respected civil society figures, on the one-year anniversary of his abduction”.
“Sombath was abducted on the evening of Dec 15, 2012, from a Lao police checkpoint in Vientiane. This deplorable event was recorded on Lao government surveillance cameras,” the statement said. Continue reading “One year on, still no trace of prominent Lao”