Forgotten U.S. allies emerge from jungles of Laos

Reuters ^ | 06-10-05 | Ed Cropley

[ChristianDefender]

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Up to 4,000 ethnic Hmong, remnants of a U.S.-backed anti-communist guerrilla army in the Laotian jungles during the Vietnam War, are ready to surrender after 30 years on the run, a U.S. activist said on Thursday.

Ex-California police officer Ed Szendrey, who was detained at the weekend by the Laotian communist government for helping 173 women, children and elderly people give themselves up, said many more Hmong were waiting to come in from the cold.

"We've had indications that there are nearly three to four thousand ready to surrender," Szendrey told a news conference in the Thai capital after his deportation from the landlocked southeast Asian nation as a "trouble-maker."

Human rights groups and Hmong refugees say the Pathet Lao communists, who seized power in Laos in 1975 in the closing stages of the Vietnam War, have prosecuted a war for decades against the Hmong as punishment for their alliance with the United States

Publication in the past two years of photographs of malnourished, wounded and disfigured Hmong fighters and their families, who were abandoned by the U.S. after the Vietnam War, have corroborated those claims.

They also prompted Szendrey and his wife Georgie, who run a pro-Hmong group called the Fact Finding Commission, to try to broker their surrender on humanitarian grounds with the Laotian government.

Szendrey has built up clandestine satellite phone links with the poorly armed jungle guerrillas and he said Hmong fighters feared they could hold out no longer.

"We received a call that things had become so desperate for them that they didn't think the women and children could survive when the rainy season came," Szendrey said.

MIDNIGHT RUN

With assurances of aid from Washington and the United Nations, but no official diplomatic support, he organized a daring midnight rendezvous with the group of 173 refugees by a road near the Xaisomboun "Special Zone," a region off-limits to foreigners.

"It was a very emotional time when the men turned the women and children over to us," Szendrey said. "They had to leave swiftly."

Shortly after dawn, the rag-tag group made its way from the trees to a nearby village, where they were welcomed with open arms by residents and officials with offers of food and water, Szendrey said. If the initial group were well treated, and he could get word through to the 15,000 Hmong still believed to be hiding in the dense jungle, Szendrey said thousands more were ready to give themselves up.

However, soldiers arrived and the refugees were taken away. State media say they are being cared for in a village near the northeast town of Phonsavanh. There is no independent verification of their condition.

Szendrey, his wife and two U.S.-Hmong activists were then arrested on their way back to the capital, Vientiane. One of the Hmong-Americans is still in custody.

A Laotian Foreign Ministry spokesman said the U.S. group had been deported for interfering in a government scheme to move Hmong villagers into larger, centralized communities to give them with better access to food, water and electricity.

[ChristianDefender]

I think they deserve our attention... i've seen a documentary about them last year in BBC.. they look so pathetic...

Lord help these people...

[Jeff Head]

Unfortunately, the communist government will probably slaughter any who surrender. They have been trying to do that for a long time now, and such a move will make it easy for them.

Rather than have them surrender to the communists, we should arrange to have any who want to, brought here and rewarded for their loyalty to us and to freedom. My guess is that they would make amongst the best Americans. We could do so for the tiniest fraction of what we are giving the illegals in social services who come here without our consent.

IMHO, that, helping these allies, would be money well spent, on them, and as a message to the world that we don't forget.

[Lurker]

What kind of Americans they might make remains to be seen, but we certainly do owe the Hmong more than just a debt of gratitude.

The Hmong aren't all that popular in parts of the midwest right now.

L

[Chode]

the Yards too...

[Jeff Head]

True enough, but there's bad apples in every batch and that particular individual will hopefully get what is coming to him after everything is laid out in a court of law. As for these others, as yuu say, I feel we owe those that we left in the jungles something.

Having them surrender to their tormentors is not likely to lead but to one place for them IMHO.

[JimSEA]

A Laotian Foreign Ministry spokesman said the U.S. group had been deported for interfering in a government scheme to move Hmong villagers into larger, centralized communities to give them with better access to food, water and electricity.

I can't help but think of a large prison we saw which had just finished construction a couple of Km north of Luang Prabong.