WORRIED: Plight of the Hmong

Thank you very much for your frequent reports on the Hmong. Unfortunately, worldwide there is not too much media coverage on the catastrophic situation of these people in Laos and Thailand. All the more a reason to appreciate your efforts.

We, the Society for Threatened Peoples, however, were shocked to read the interview with Brig-Gen Buasieng Champaphan, the Lao deputy chief-of-staff and co-chairman of the Thai-Laos General Border ("Solving the Hmong problem", Sept 7).

A true public relations stunt: PR because Buasieng is trying to sell a positive and innocent truth that lacks proof on all ends. And stunt because it is an almost impossible, bold attempt to fool those who actually know better.

These days not even the United Nations has any doubt any more that the Hmong _ not all, but some of them _ are being persecuted in the remote and mountainous jungles of Laos.

Eyewitness accounts, reports, video footage, photographs... there are thousands of documents to prove that many Hmong fled their home country Laos because of a well-founded fear of death. They fled to protect themselves and their families, and not, as Buasieng put it, because they just do not love their home.

Furthermore, the definition of refugee is not reserved just for people fleeing war. According to the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is a person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country.

Based on this definition many Lao Hmong in Thailand have to be considered refugees _ contrary to the Thai-Lao policy which stigmatises them as illegal immigrants.

The interview leads to one important question which could cause Buasieng's highly questionable line of argumentation to collapse like a house of cards: If the allegations of those outside of Laos _ that Laos would jail returned Hmong, rape Hmong girls, treat the Hmong inhumanely and even murder them _ are not true, why do both Thailand and Laos refuse independent observers to get a picture of the situation of the Hmong? Is that not the strategy of someone who has something to hide?

Would independent observers not prove their point and let the world know that there is nothing to be concerned about, provided that Laos' and Thailand's claims are true?

REBECCA SOMMER

Society for Threatened Peoples

International Indigenous Department, USA

(published September 11, 2007)