[Tlc] L-ecology

[Susan Cunningham]

>
>
> The latter are particularly suspicious of foreign-run NGOs,
> many of which work to empower local communities by teaching
> them basic democratic principles


That's what they are up to? Which ones? Says who?


> and which security officials
> see as a challenge to the authority of the ruling Lao People's
> Revolutionary Party, the country?s only political party. While
> Sompawn's local business was not an NGO, many of its tourism
> activities were done in close consultation with local communities.
>
> Foreign devils
> As a legacy of wars in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, first
> against the French and then against the US


Weren't there are a few other armies involved? Particularly in Nam Tha?



> , the country's
> communist rulers remain wary of foreign influences. For
> instance, some of the NGOs that have been targeted for
> harassment are known to have had Christian connections.


Can't you name them?  At least the ones that have left the country? What are
they ostensibly doing anyway?

>
>
> While the vast majority of the country's lowlanders are
> Buddhist, Christianity has made inroads in the highlands, home
> of several ethnic minorities that have a long history of
> resistance to integration into mainstream Lao society. There
> are historical reasons for their squeamishness. During the
> Indochina conflict, thousands of Hmong tribesmen - although
> ostensibly part of the then Royal Lao Army -


Only ostensibly?


> were armed and
> equipped by the American Central Intelligence Agency to fight
> the communist Pathet Lao, which, in the end, emerged
> victorious in the war.


All by themselves?

>
>
> Then American Christian missionaries worked more or less
> openly for the CIA, among them the legendary Edgar "Pop"
> Buell, an Indiana farmer who was assigned to the Xieng Khouang
> area in and around the Plain of Jars, where he came into
> contact with the Hmong.


Didn't he work for US AID? I recall in Charles Weldon's book that there was
an exchange between the two of them in which they both said they didn't
believe in God.
Shouldn't Lintner note that the Plain of Jars is a long, long way from Luang
Nam Tha and the the latter went communist in 1962? How does this jibe with
the period when CIA began supporting the Hmong?

What Christian groups worked for the CIA? I don't recall this at all in
Roger Warner's book, which seems the most comprehensive and objective
coverage. Or, for that matter, in anything by Martin Stuart-Fox or Grant
Evans. Am I missing something?



> Later, he became the principal contact
> man between the CIA and the Hmong, working closely with the
> Hmong warlord Vang Pao,


Is "warlord" an accurate term?


>
> However, the events in California had repercussions in
> Thailand, where in a bid to ease bilateral tensions the
> government announced that it would repatriate thousands of
> Hmong refugees back to Laos. Now totaling about 8,000, their
> numbers have swelled in recent years due to fresh arrivals,
> indicating that all is not well in the Lao mountains. Although
> the Hmong insurgency, which simmered on throughout the 1980s
> and into the 1990s,


perhaps a little more detail? Any other armies involved with the Hmong?
There is just a single Hmong army?


> is now more or less over, there are
> reports of occasional skirmishes and ambushes involving
> hill-tribe bands, mostly in the area around Phou Bia mountains
> south of the Plain of Jars, and near the town of Kasi on the
> main road between Vientiane and Luang Prabang.


Says who? Who does the reporting? How recently?

>
>
> With the revelations of a Vang Pao's latest plot, the already
> paranoid security authorities in Laos may have seen a broader
> US conspiracy in the eco-tourism joint venture they broke up
> with Sompawn's abduction and the US citizen fleeing the
> country.


Why not talk to him, then?



> They may also have read with some suspicion the US
> State Department's International Religious Freedom Reports,
> which frequently mention "abuses of citizen's religious
> freedom" in Laos, especially arrests of Christians and actions
> taken against the independent Lao Evangelical Church (LEC).
> The 2007 report mentions closure of LEC-affiliated churches
> and the detention without charges of local Christian community
> leaders.


There is a lot of assuming here. Are Lao PDR rulers known for their
wide-ranging reading habits--in English yet? There are actually better-known
human rights groups that track religious persecution. What do they say? Note
that we don't even know if the NGOs in Nam Tha were US affiliated. I recall
a French one there.

Come on, there couldn't be more than a handful of NGOs in Nam Tha. What's
happened to the eco-tourism project started by UNESCO or some other UN
agency?

And where are these churches?

>
>
> Costly xenophobia
> With that bad publicity, the security authorities seem to
> believe that remote provinces such as Luang Nam Tha are better
> cleansed of foreign, especially Western, influences. Wealthy
> Chinese tourists to the newly opened casino on the Lao side of
> the frontier at Boten bring in only money, not new potentially
> destabilizing ideas about human rights and democracy, so they
> remain welcome.


The falang in Nam Tha struck me a few years ago as very careful. Seems like
there's a lot of leaping to conclusions here. Just exposure to the internet
might have a big effect. Ditto learning English and taking foreign tourist
out of treks. Seeing their overseas relatives after decades apart. Have
internet shops been curtailed? How many businesses have been shut down
exactly? Is the Boat Landing still open? How many NGOs were shut down? How
many remain?

If you're going to bring up Chinese in Boten, what about the Chinese in Nam
Tha? Locals bring it up all the time (In the context of: "You think there
are a lot of Chinese in XYZ?! They're all over here.")


> Aloon Dalaloy, vice governor of Luang Nam Tha,
> is reported


Where? By whom?

to have told a public gathering in the province
> last year that "we are still fighting the revolution, not
> against the enemy's bombs and guns, but the Americans and the
> Christians are still our enemies."
>
>  the Asia Foundation pointed out that Laos has only one
> university, which opened only 11 years ago.


But isn't this an unreliable CIA front agency intent on topping the Lao PDR?


Finally, don't you think Aung San should be described as a warlord who led a
Japanese-created and funded army? Ostensibly patriotic army, that is.

Susan Cunningham


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