Hmong Conflict

”Politically impossible”
to focus on crimes of
United States and
allies at Stockholm International Forum--
but little Laos is
a different story

Philip Blenkinsop

Hmong rebels in a remote part of Laos fall to their knees, under the
misonception that visiting journalists from Time magazine are C.I.A.
agents who have come to the rescue after decades of desperate waiting.

Genocide Victims
Accused of Genocide

The exhibition features a series of photographs purporting to depict the ”extermination” of the Hmong by the Lao government.

The government of Laos is accused of committing genocide against that country’s Hmong ethnic minority in a well-publicized exhibition scheduled to run from 17 January to 7 February 2004 at Sweden’s National Museum of History in Stockholm.

Entitled, ”Making Differences”, the exhibition is being presented as a ”cultural” complement to the Stockholm International Forum to be held during 26-28 January. That event is the fourth and last in series which has focused on genocide and related issues, all at the initiative of Prime Minister Göran Persson and financed by his government.

The stated theme of the final Forum is ”Preventing Genocide: Threats and Responsibilities”, and the relevance of the exhibition is explained as follows: ”It has been said that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. . . . ’Making Differences’ will make sure that we do not forget.”

The featured component of the exhibition is a series of photographs purporting to depict the ”extermination” of the Hmong by the Lao government. They were taken in early 2003 by Australian photographer Philip Blenkinsop during a three-day visit to a small group of Hmong in northern Laos. The photos have previously been exhibited in other countries.

The journalists were on assignment from Time magazine, a conservative weekly that is well-known for its staunch support of U.S. foreign policy and its intimate relations with government agencies.











The rebel groups have continued to conduct sporadic guerrilla activities, with financial support from Hmong exiles and other interests opposed to the governments of Laos and Vietnam.

Time assignment

Together with reporter Andrew Perrin, Blenkinsop was on assignment from Time magazine, a conservative weekly that is well-known for its staunch support of U.S. foreign policy and its intimate relations with government agencies. During the Vietnam War, for example, the magazine’s vice-president served as head of the U.S. propaganda office in Saigon.

The group visited by the Time journalists is a remnant of the Hmong faction recruited by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) to assist in its war against the three countries of Indochina. After the war’s formal conclusion in 1975, members of that faction emigrated in large numbers to the United States and other western countries.

But some remained behind and continued to conduct sporadic guerrilla activities, with financial support from Hmong exiles and other interests opposed to the governments of Laos and Vietnam. The inevitable reaction of police and military authorities, in combination with the miserable living conditions of the rebel groups, has resulted in heavy loss of life.

According to Blenkinsop, the group of some 850 individuals he photographed once numbered 7000. He also reports that they have been so cut off from the outside world that at first they believed that the two Time journalists were C.I.A. agents come to rescue them after decades of desperate waiting.

This historical background is briefly noted at the Stockholm exhibition. But the emphasis is on what Time has reported as the government’s persecution of the entire Hmong people. Andrew Perrin’s article in Time’s Asia edition of 30 June 2003 is headlined, ”Licensed to Kill”, and alleges a ”military campaign launched by the communist leaders of Laos to eradicate the Hmong.” According to the subheading: ”While Burma's junta is justly reviled, Laos' brutal leaders get away with murder.”

”I have been told to be careful in using the term, genocide,” says Blenkinsop in a videotaped introduction to the Stockholm exhibition. ”But I don’t know what else to call it when you try to execute a group of people because of their beliefs.”

”The accusation is
pure nonsense. I am
very, very certain that
the government is not systematically killing off the Hmong."



















"It should also be kept in mind that the violence practised by some of the anti-government groups would be regarded anywhere else as terrorism. Is there any government in the world that tolerates armed rebellion?"

Disputed claim

However, the accusation of genocide is sharply challenged by other observers with long experience of Laos and the stubborn conflict involving small groups of Hmong who apparently believe that they are still fighting on the side of the United States in a war that ended nearly thirty years ago.



		The Hmong in Vietnam The publicity material of the ”Making Differences” exhibition also accuses Vietnam’s government of conducting a programme of ”ethnic cleansing” against the Hmong in that country. This is equally untrue, according to Lady Borton of the American Friends Service Committee: ”Those who were affiliated with the U.S. Special Forces during the war and who are now living in the United States have been consistently fabricating stories and creating incidents to make trouble for the Vietnamese. ”One example: Just before the Party Congress, they drew 24 people across the border to Cambodia and arranged with the U.S. State Department for them to be granted immediate asylum in the U.S. They did this without consulting with U.S. Ambassador Pete Peterson in Hanoi. This was an obvious attempt to create a ’magnet’ so that more people would cross the border, thinking they could be airlifted into middle-class American life. Ambassador Peterson was furious; he knew nothing about this and was ’had’ along with so many others. ”It is all terribly unfortunate. So many incidents.” The American Friends Service Committee, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, is a non-partisan Quaker organization which provided humanitarian aid to victims on all sides of the Vietnam War. Lady Borton is a U.S. citizen who has represented the AFSC in Vietnam for over thirty years and is author of such works as Sensing the Enemy: An American Woman among the Boat People of Vietnam.

One who does not agree is Jan Ovesen, a Swedish anthropologist who has been conducting field research in Laos since 1992: ”The accusation is pure nonsense,”he says. ”I am very, very certain that the government is not systematically killing off minorities, including the Hmong. In fact, many government officials have been making sincere efforts to overcome problems of discrimination and to integrate the Hmong into Lao society.

”Such efforts are not always successful, due to cultural conflicts and a severe lack of resources,” observes Ovesen. ”But the results have been generally positive. The vast majority of Hmong have had plenty of opportunity to join mainstream society, and most of them have chosen to do so. Of course, there are problems; but there are also numerous success stories. The Hmong tend to be hard-working and many of them have become quite wealthy by Lao standards.”

That view is shared by Britta Nordström, a Swedish physician who served as a public health advisor in Laos during 2001-2003, i.e. including the period when the Time journalists were visiting the Hmong rebels. ”I certainly never saw any indication of systematic persecution,” she relates. ”Many of my colleagues were Hmong employed by the national health service, and there are Hmong sitting in the National Assembly. I also visited Hmong communities all over the province, and I saw no indication of anything that could even remotely be described as genocide.

”It is very important not to generalize in such matters,” notes Britta Nordström. ”As in all minority groups with the kind of history that the Hmong have experienced, there are several different factions. One faction of the Hmong is pro-government, and many of them have joined the ruling] Lao People's Revolutionary Party. Another faction is anti-government, with support from exiles in the United States and elsewhere. In between are all shades of opinion and belief.

”It could well be that there are, or were, 7000 Hmong rebels who never stopped fighting after the American War”, says Britta Nordström. ”But that would be a very small portion of the total: There are at least 200,000 Hmong in Laos. It should also be kept in mind that the violence practised by some of the anti-government groups would be regarded anywhere else as terrorism. Is there any government in the world that tolerates armed rebellion-- especially when it has been financed and possibly directed by external forces?”

"The more radical elements have ambushed local police stations, small convoys, etc. with predictable retaliation from the Lao military."





















"One could reasonably argue that, of the minorities, the Hmong are among those who are best educated and most prosperous."




















There is no valid evidence to support the accusations of genocide, and much to contradict them. On the other hand, the people of Laos in general have been subjected to genocidal attacks by the United States and its allies.

Disinformation campaign

Adds Ric Wasserman, a Sweden-based U.S. journalist who recently
spent two years in Laos: ”The more radical elements have ambushed local police stations, small convoys, etc. with predictable retaliation from the Lao military. This is an undisputed fact, but not anything like ’extermination’, as the Time journalists would have it.

"A significant aspect of the conflict,” says Ric Wasserman, ”is that Thailand has for years conducted an intensive disinformation campaign, using the media to agitate and provoke-- quite successfully at times-- ethnic tension along the northeast Laotian border with Thailand.”

Such efforts are part of a broader pattern of disinformation and/or misinformation that has been remarked upon by Grant Evans, an Australian anthropologist currently at the University of Hong Kong, and author of A Short History of Laos: The Land in Between:

Laos has been described in recent weeks as a ”rogue state”, as a ”Taliban regime” in a U.S. Senate inquiry, as a state engaged in ethnic cleansing'' against its Hmong minority, and, not surprisingly, it is also alleged by some lobby groups in the United States to be using outlawed chemical weapons against the Hmong -- in another instance of the ever-illusive ”weapons of mass destruction”.

Such allegations no doubt appeal to simple-minded senators from Texas. But this disturbing proliferation of White House-inspired ”newspeak” is now applied to Laos even by usually level-headed journalists. All of the above allegations are untrue.

Many of the reports on the Hmong inside Laos suggest that the government is engaged in an ethnically inspired campaign of discrimination against them. In fact, the Lao constitution and laws are more tolerant towards minorities than many of its neighbours. More tolerant than Thailand, for example. . . .

One finds Hmong people inside Laos at all levels of government, either as officials in ministries or practising as medical doctors or as teachers in the schools or the university. One finds Hmong active as commercial traders in the countryside in the north and in the northern towns, many of them assisted in this activity by significant remittances received from their relatives overseas. Indeed, I think one could reasonably argue that, of the minorities, the Hmong are among those who are best educated and most prosperous.

(Bangkok Post, 8 July 2003)

It thus appears that there is no valid evidence to support the accusations of genocide made by Time magazine and others, and much to contradict them. On the other hand, the people of Laos in general have been subjected to genocidal attacks by the United States and its allies, as pointed out in a report to the Environmental Conference on Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam:

”Genocide and related concepts turn up frequently in the literature on the Vietnam War. A C.I.A. agent in the Phoenix program describes it as ’the vehicle by which we were getting into a bad genocide program’. An analyst from a U.S. research institute refers to ’a whitewash of genocide’ committed by his country’s air force. An Army sergeant condemns ’the systematic destruction of a people that is genocide’.. . . A U.S. historian refers to ’a level of firepower that so far exceeds distinctions between combatants and noncombatants as to be necessarily aimed at all Vietnamese’. [The bombing of Laos was even more intense.] . . . . For Richard Falk, a prominent U.S. authority on international law, there was not much doubt: ’In the Vietnam War, the use of bombing tactics and cruel weapons against the civilian population appears to me to establish a prima facie case of genocide against the United States’.” (Ethical, Legal & Policy Issues. p. 29.)

A nation that has itself been subjected to genocide is now being accused of committing that crime against one of its minorities, on the basis of an ethnic conflict which is a bizarre remnant of the genocidal war conducted by the United States.

"There has not been the slightest reference to the enormous massacres that have been committed in recent decades by Western superpowers and/or their proxies."

Political impossibilities

In short, a nation that has itself been subjected to genocide is now being accused of committing that crime against one of its minorities, on the basis of an ethnic conflict which is a bizarre remnant of the genocidal war conducted by the United States.

Similarly, the Historical Museum’s exhibition also includes a set of photos depicting the takeover of Cambodia in 1975 by the genocidal Khmer Rouge. Asked whether there would also be information regarding the strong support provided to the Khmer Rouge by the United States, England and China-- even long after the full extent of the genocide had been disclosed-- project director Thomas Nordanstad replied, ”Unfortunately not.”

These circumstances appear to substantiate criticisms of Prime Minister Persson’s costly project as heavily biased on behalf of Western powers, especially the United States.

Daniel Brandell, Martin Linde and Åsa Linderborg are the names of three Swedish historians who in a joint article have argued that, ”The pro-West tendency is obvious. ’Evil’ is consistently located outside the sphere of the West’s liberal-capitalistic civilization. Suggestions to take up the crimes of Western colonialism, the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the like have simply been omitted from the agenda of the Stockholm International Forum. Likewise, there has not been the slightest reference to the enormous massacres that have been committed in recent decades by Western superpowers and/or their proxies (for example, in Indochina, East Timor, southern Africa and Central America).”

Asked to address this type of criticism, Ambassador Krister Kumlin, Secretary-General of the Stockholm International Forum, first replied that he did not understand the question. ”What are you trying to say?” he asked.

Pressed further to explain how it was possible to justify an exhibition which accuses Laos of a genocide it has not committed, while ignoring the well-documented genocide to which it has been subjected, Amb. Kulin finally said, ”Of course, you know it is politically impossible to address such issues.”

-- Al Burke
16 January 2004