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Authorities in Vietnam said Friday they will prosecute 84 people accused of being involved in deadly attacks on two commune offices in central Dak Lak province and ordered them held in pre-trial detention. It isn’t clear who was behind the June 11 attacks, which left nine people dead, or what motivated them. On Friday, the Ministry of Public Security said it had confirmed that “organizations and individuals from overseas” had been involved, without getting more specific. “Materials and evidence collected by security forces show that the incident took place with the support and guidance of several organizations and individuals from...

(SNIP) Searchers recovered the bodies of Molly Cheng and her three children, ages 3, 4 and 5, from Vadnais Lake on Friday and Saturday. Authorities had said earlier the deaths were being investigated as a triple murder-suicide. The Ramsey County Sheriff´s Department said Tuesday that Cheng called police on Friday morning and said her husband, Yee Lee, had fatally shot himself. That afternoon, one of Cheng´s relatives called police to say she planned to kill her children and herself, the department said, resulting in a welfare check that eventually tracked Cheng's cell phone to the lake.The Ramsey County medical examiner...

Officers shot and killed a man who pulled a gun as they tried to keep him out of a complex of marijuana farms in the Lava Fire evacuation zone. Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue told The Sacramento Bee that the man was trying to drive into the Mount Shasta Vista subdivision on Monday and pointed a handgun at a group of officers that included a sheriff’s deputy and local police.

Now the community must plan funerals, prepare for the upcoming New Year and try to make sense of the tragedy as police work to identify who is responsible for the latest deadly shooting. Fresno is now home to the second largest Hmong community in the United States, with more than 30,000 people living within the city. Its population is second only to Minneapolis. They recently reached several milestones, including opening a museum celebrating Hmong heritage and getting their first council member elected. Arias describes the neighborhood as the “heart of the community,” only blocks from the Hmong shopping center referred...

Foua, a farmer in his 30s, has spent three months behind bars in Vietnam’s northwestern province of Dien Bien. He will remain there for two more, convicted of deforestation – even though the law only stipulates a fine as punishment. His crime? Cutting down nine trees to build a hut for his family. But his wife, Cua, who did not want to reveal her or Foua’s real names for fear of retaliation, says her husband has been persecuted for being Christian. When she last saw him, he was in hospital, three days after he was jailed, his leg shackled to...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) — Nestled under the dominating silhouette of Mt. Shasta in northernmost California is a bustling community of Vietnam War refugees and Hmong-Americans seeking solitude in normally tranquil Siskiyou County. Hundreds of newly settled Hmong residents sought calm in the mountainous terrain, but many say they have collided with a sheriff hell-bent on restricting their voting and property rights. Alleging systematic voter suppression in the June primary and subsequent racial profiling by Siskiyou County Sheriff Jon Lopey, 10 Hmong property owners sued the sheriff and Siskiyou County on Monday in Federal Court. "I remember the panic and the...

In what was described as the first occasion of its kind in the country, a memorial to the Southeast Asian forces who fought as allies of the U.S. during the Vietnam War era was dedicated at Fort Snelling on Saturday. The plaque, in the cemetery's Airborne Circle, memorializes the Hmong, Laotian and Khmer special forces units that served in Cambodia and Laos. "I believe that this is probably the first time that they have been recognized specifically in a place like this," Trudell Guerue, president of the Chapter XV 173rd Airborne Brigade Association, said during the dedication ceremony. For Khoa...

As we pause to remember and honor the service of our veterans on this Veterans Day, let us also remember those veterans who are all too often remain forgotten – even when we take the time to remember those who were intentionally overlooked for so many years. Just three of these examples include the Filipino Scouts of World War II, the US Soldiers and their Korean Augmentees who fought and died along the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) in Korea in the years after the Korean War ceasefire was signed, and the Hmong tribesmen who fought along with our Special Forces in...

ST. PAUL, Minn.- U.S. fast-food giant McDonald's apparent first attempt to use billboards to advertise its breakfasts to Hmong-Americans has left it with egg on its face. Two billboards written in the Hmong language went up this past week in St. Paul, Minn., home to a large portion of the United States' Hmong immigrant population. They read: "Yuavtxhawbpabraukojsawv yuavntxivzograukoj mus." It's meant to be Hmong for "Coffee gets you up, breakfast gets you going." But the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported Saturday some Hmong say the phrasing is awkward and words are run together. "It sounds weird in Hmong because...

What began as an exercise to help college students in Wisconsin master the Hmong language is now an annual test of suspense and nerves in St. Paul. "It's taken on a life of its own," said Tzianeng Vang, founder of the Minnesota Hmong Spelling Bee. Now in its fourth year, the bee is set for Saturday at Concordia University in St. Paul. Students from nine schools in the Twin Cities -- the most since the bee began -- will compete for a traveling plaque and bragging rights. Most important, the bee gives them practice pronouncing Hmong words, something many first-...

The US Army has rejected a request for ethnic Hmong leader Vang Pao to be buried with full military honours in Arlington National Cemetery. Gen Pao led a 15-year CIA-sponsored secret war in Laos during the Vietnam War and, when it was lost, led tens of thousands of his people into exile. He died last month. The army's decision came as mourners attended the first day of a six-day funeral in California. Gen Pao's friends said they would appeal to the White House. "Obviously to everyone who is here today to honour Gen Vang Pao, this is very disappointing," said...

Gen. Vang Pao, an iconic figure in the Hmong community and a key U.S. ally during the Vietnam War, died today in Clovis. Vang, 81, was admitted to Clovis Community Medical Center on Dec. 26. Vang apparently was admitted shortly after making his annual appearance at the Hmong International New Year event at the Fresno Fairgrounds. Charlie Waters, a friend and veterans advocate in Fresno, said Vang was suffering from pneumonia and an ongoing heart problem. Vang is revered by many as a father figure and leader who helped bring and settle the Hmong community into American life. But he...

The Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) yesterday announced its withdrawal from the Hmong camp in Huay Nam Khao, Phetchabun province, after operating there for nearly four years. The reason, they say, is the Thai military's restrictions and coercive tactics. The withdrawal is a further embarrassment for the Abhisit adminstration, which recently suffered a bruised image due to the Navy's inhumane push-back of the Rohingya boat people. Gilles Isard, MSF's head of mission in Thailand, said the Thai military's scare tactics to pressure ethnic Lao Hmong to accept a forced return to Laos and its intensifying restrictions on MSF's activities, such as...

PHETCHABUN, Thailand – Thailand sent army troops with shields and batons to evict some 4,000 ethnic Hmong asylum seekers Monday and send them back to Laos despite strong objections from the U.S. and rights groups who fear they will face persecution. Under tight security, more than 1,000 of the Hmong were loaded onto covered military trucks and driven out of the camp toward buses waiting near the Lao border, Thai authorities said. Journalists kept at a distance from the camp could see many children inside the trucks. With the eviction under way, the United States called for it to stop....

Thailand has begun deporting a group of about 4,000 ethnic Hmong back to communist Laos, despite international concerns for their safety. Thai officials said unarmed soldiers began closing a camp for Hmong refugees in northern Phetchabun province. Thailand describes them as economic migrants. The Hmong say they face persecution in Laos because they sided with US forces during the Vietnam war. The UN had urged the Thais to call off plans to deport them.

MAPLEWOOD, Minn. - Arrangements have been made for a traditional, three-day Hmong funeral for Pfc. Kham Xiong of St. Paul who was among 13 people killed in the Fort Hood Army Base shootings. The funeral service for Xiong will start at Legacy Funeral Home's Maplewood chapel starting at 9 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 28. The service will run through the afternoon of Monday, Nov. 30. Xiong will then be buried with military honors at Fort Snelling National Cemetery. "Pfc. Kham Xiong came to America from Thailand as a small child," President Barack Obama said during a memorial service at Fort...

Shamans can tie strings around a neck and wrist. A red string around the neck helps in healing, and a white string around a wrist maintains a soul during hospitalization. A shaman, or "txiv neeb" in Hmong, can ask the Mercy hospital staff for permission to do ceremonies that go beyond chanting. An example would be a request to sprinkle water over incisions. According to Mercy's policy, hospital staff are to try to make accommodations. The ceremonies can occur in patient rooms, in the emergency department or in surgery preparation areas. The hospital ceremonies are brief -- 10 to 15...

The patient in Room 328 had diabetes and hypertension. But when Va Meng Lee, a Hmong shaman, began the healing process by looping a coiled thread around the patient’s wrist, Mr. Lee’s chief concern was summoning the ailing man’s runaway soul. “Doctors are good at disease,” Mr. Lee said as he encircled the patient, Chang Teng Thao, a widower from Laos, in an invisible “protective shield” traced in the air with his finger. “The soul is the shaman’s responsibility.” At Mercy Medical Center in Merced, where roughly four patients a day are Hmong from northern Laos, healing includes more than...

LAOS - "LAO SOLDIERS DECAPITATE TWO-MONTH-OLD GIRL AHEAD OF SENATOR WEBB'S VISIT Infant used as target practice during military attacks that leave 26 civilians dead." August 20, 2009

A United Nations human rights expert will travel to the Twin Cities next month to listen to Hmong families upset about the desecration of graves in Thailand. The expert will hear testimony about the unearthing of hundreds of graves where thousands of Hmong refugees once lived. The site is near a Buddhist temple in Thailand. The hearing will be at the University of Minnesota, where the Human Rights Program has taken up a project to study and help resolve the issue.