Under fire, Vietnamese bloggers keep up dissent

By CHRIS BRUMMITT
Associated Press –09/13/2012

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnam's government has vowed to crack down on three dissident blogs, a move that appeared to backfire Thursday as record numbers of people visited the sites and the bloggers pledged to keep up their struggle for freedom of expression.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung's order for police to arrest those responsible for the websites reflects growing unease within the Communist Party over the emergence of blogs and social media accounts that publish dissenting views, independent reporting and whistleblowing. The party doesn't allow free media, and it fears criticism or discussion of its failings on the Internet could lead to social instability and — ultimately — loss of its power.

"Nobody can shut our mouth or stop our freedom of expression," said a member of the team that administers one of the targeted blogs, Danlambao. "This is our mission. We will continue at any cost." The blogger chatted over the Internet with The Associated Press on the condition that his name and exact location not be published because of the risk of arrest.

Vietnam arrests US pro-democracy activist

In this undated photo, Vietnamese-American pro-democracy activist Nguyen Quoc Quan is seen in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Quan was detained on April 17, 2012 for being accused of planning to hold protests for Viet Tan, a banned U.S. exile group, during May Day festivities and the anniversary of the fall of the former U.S.-backed South Vietnamese capital, Saigon, on April 30, 1975. (AP Photo/ Vietnam News Agency)

04/29/2012
Associated Press

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — A Vietnamese-American pro-democracy activist has been arrested and accused of terrorism for allegedly trying to sabotage liberation celebrations commemorating the end of the Vietnam War, state media said Sunday.

Nguyen Quoc Quan, 58, of California, was detained April 17 after arriving at the airport in southern Ho Chi Minh City, Tuoi Tre newspaper reported. He is accused of planning to hold protests for Viet Tan, a banned U.S. exile group, during this week's May Day festivities and the April 30 anniversary of the fall of the former U.S.-backed South Vietnamese capital, Saigon, to the northern communists in 1975.

Authorities also found many documents in Quan's possession on "terrorist training," the paper said. Quan, a mathematician, was previously sentenced to six months in jail by a Ho Chi Minh City court in 2008 for terrorism.

[Vaclav] Havel, leader of "Velvet Revolution," dies

Vaclav Havel

A man places a candle in tribute to late former Czech President Vaclav Havel at Wenceslas Square in Prague December 18, 2011. Vaclav Havel, a dissident playwright who was jailed by Communists and then went on to lead the bloodless ''Velvet Revolution'' and become Czech president, died at 75 on Sunday. The words on the placard (bottom L) reads: ''We thank you''. Credit: Reuters/David W Cerny

People light candles and hold the national flag in tribute to late former Czech President Vaclav Havel at Wenceslas Square in Prague December 18, 2011. Credit: REUTERS/David W Cerny

Sun Dec 18, 2011
By Michael Winfrey and Jana Mlcochova

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Vaclav Havel, an anti-Communist playwright who became Czech president and a worldwide symbol of peace and freedom after leading the bloodless "Velvet Revolution," died at the age of 75 on Sunday.

The former chain smoker died at his country home in Hradecek, north of Prague, of a long respiratory illness after surviving operations for lung cancer and a burst intestine in the late 1990s that left him frail for more than a decade.

The diminutive playwright, who invited the Rolling Stones to medieval Prague castle, took Bill Clinton to a smoky Prague jazz club to play saxophone and was a friend of the Dalai Lama, rose to fame after facing down Prague's Communist rulers.

From '[Vietnamese] Hell to [US] Heaven'

Tran Khai Thanh Thuy (left) in San Francisco with her daughter, June 24, 2011.

Freed Vietnamese dissident vows to continue fighting for human rights.

2011-06-25
RFA

Fresh from her release from prison in Hanoi, a Vietnamese pro-democracy activist said Friday that she would continue to expose rights abuses in the one-party communist state she calls "hell."

"My first impression [here in the U.S.] was that I just came from hell to heaven, and until now I still can't believe that this is true," Tran Khai Thanh Thuy said in an interview on arrival in the United States.

Thuy, a 50-year-old journalist and novelist, was deported to San Francisco with her teenage daughter on Friday following her release by the Vietnamese authorities on humanitarian grounds.

It is believed to be the first such release in recent years.

Thuy was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in February last year on an assault charge, which she called "a fabrication and total slander."

Vietnam as Tunisia in waiting

January 29, 2011
By Adam Boutzan
Asia Times

Successful rebellions are inherently unpredictable. The middle-class revolt that recently toppled the Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali regime in Tunisia can only be explained in retrospect; hardly anyone, apparently, saw it coming.

Analysts now are pointing to the combustible mix of too many educated young people and too few jobs, a "kleptocratic elite", and the failure of the state security apparatus to defend the regime when the chips were down.

Other analysts are debating whether the Tunisian example will be replicated in neighboring Arab nations, including Algeria, Egypt and Yemen, and if so, how ought the world's democracies respond to the turmoil.

Foreign ministries from Washington, London, Tokyo to Paris and Berlin are trying to guess what posture is most likely to preserve their governments' ability to find common ground to work with whoever ends up on top of the heap if a revolt succeeds, yet not upset current relationships if the incumbents weather the challenge.

If they are wise, they won't just look at the Arab world.

The revolt in Tunisia looks a lot like the protests that rocked the mullah-cracy in Iran a little more than a year ago. It wasn't about Islam but rather about social justice and personal freedoms. And if that is true, analysts ought to be considering its relevance to all nations, Islamic or not, in awkward stages of development.

In many developing nations education and digitally driven social networking have made young, urban populations aware of what they haven't got. In some places, they haven't got the stuff someone can buy if he or she had a steady job. In other places, they haven't got the right to say what they think or change their leaders, let alone their system.

Vietnam falls into this second category.

Former Hmong General Vang Pao passed away in the US

File photos of former Hmong general Vang Pao, who once commanded a CIA-backed "secret army" of Hmong guerrillas during the Vietnam war. He died in California aged 81, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Vietnam War 'secret army' chief dies in US hospital

7/01/2011
AFP

"...his leadership rested on the force of his own personality, which was energetic, volatile, direct and fearless"

Former Laotian general Vang Pao, who once commanded a CIA-backed "secret army" of Hmong guerrillas during the Vietnam War, died in a Californian hospital. He was 81.

"He died today... the family was there," said a spokeswoman for the Clovis Community Medical Center, some 200 miles (322 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco, adding that he had been at the facility since December 26.

A general in the Royal Lao army and member of the Hmong ethnic minority, Vang Pao ran an irregular army in the 1960s and 70s, commanding thousands of fighters in the US-funded covert war against Vietnamese and Lao communist forces.

He fled to the United States in 1975 after communists ousted Laos' royal rulers, and was credited with helping negotiate the resettlement in America of tens of thousands of fellow Hmong.

Nobel Peace Prize 1983: Lech Walesa

The posting by Khmer Democrat on the Solidarity Movement of the Polish Labor Union led me to choose next its leader Lech Walesa in my series on Nobel Peace Laureates. I get goose bumps in reading about his life, his struggles and now to know in hindsight how they paid off grandly for the prosperity and development of present-day Poland, a shining member of the European Union, especially in the way it handled smoothly with great democratic maturity the transition of leadership after the very tragic plane crash earlier this year.

Also, in reading this Award Ceremony Speech about Lech Walesa, my thoughts keep flashing back to the courage and sacrifices of Chea Vichea, the labor union leader—who was slain in broad daylight, with all evidence pointing to the power-that-be—a man I was honored to call a friend since 1995. (I highly recommend watching the award-winning film Who Killed Chea Vichea? by Bradley Cox.)

In SOLIDARITY with the oppressed, with the aggrieved, with the poor, with the landless, with the hard-working people of Cambodia – the silent majority who are growing impressively loud.

- Theary C. Seng, Phnom Penh, 5 Oct. 2010

. . . . .

Award Ceremony Speech delivered by Egil Aarvik, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, on the occasion of the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize for 1983, Oslo, December 10, 1983.

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:

"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world."

Thus begins the text of the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights, a declaration which, with its definition of the concept of peace, forms the basis of the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision to award this year's Peace Prize to the Polish trade union leader, Lech Walesa.

The campaign for human rights is, necessarily, an inseparable part of the struggle for peace. The selection of a Peace Prize winner on these grounds is not new: laureates such as the South African Albert Lutuli, Martin Luther King from the U.S.A., Andrei Sakharov from the U.S.S.R., and the Argentinian Adolfo Pérez Esquivel received, their awards on just these grounds. The Committee believes that this year's prize winner can justly take his place among this gathering of campaigners for human rights.

Consideration of the question of human rights raises the well known problem: "Why does humanity advance so slowly?" It has, however, become more generally recognized that a peace which is won and defended through the violation of human rights, is a peace which neither can nor ought to be permanent.

The present generation has perhaps learned this in a way no previous generation experienced. Military occupation and foreign domination, together with the associated evils of physical and mental terror, have led more and more people to understand the great truth - that "freedom and life are one". Peace is created where people live and breathe in freedom, and where one does as one would be done by.

We can assume that such thoughts lie behind the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights - which the world community has adopted as the basis for peaceful coexistence between peoples and nations. For the Norwegian Nobel Committee it was a natural development to consider the Peace Prize in the light of this declaration. Through the presentation of this year's award the Committee once again draws the attention of the world community to its own definition of the concept of peace.

It follows from this that the Committee's deliberations and decisions are necessarily independent of national and political boundaries. The guidelines given to the Committee in Alfred Nobel's will stipulate that the presentation of the Peace Prize is the responsibility of the Committee alone, and cannot be influenced by outside forces. Thus the Nobel Peace Prize can never be more - or less - than a hand stretched out to individuals or groups who give expression to the longing for peace and freedom felt by all the peoples of the world, wherever they live. We believe that it is in the spirit of Alfred Nobel's legacy that the Peace Prize should be a gesture of solidarity with those who, in the service of peace, campaign for humanity's highest ideals.

Human dignity is an important concept in this connection. The phrase has two central connotations: firstly, that the dignity of humanity is inviolable, and, secondly, that each and every human being has the same, everlasting value. A natural corollary of this is that we all have a common duty to defend human dignity. All thoughts of solidarity - even the command to love one another - have their foundation here. Human dignity is humanity's shared possession, a possession which we all have both a part in and a responsibility for. We are bound together in a common lot which makes it impossible for us to be unaffected by the fate of others.

Another Nobel Prize winner, Ernest Hemingway, opens one of his novels with a famous quotation from the English poet John Donne which illustrates this point with an almost shocking clarity:

"No man is an island, intire of its self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were; as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."

This is the way in which we ought to experience humanity's oneness. "Any man's death diminishes me." Every brother being in chains is my shame. Every longing for freedom which is suppressed, every human right which is violated is a personal defeat for me - because we are united in human kind and share one another's fate.

Up from this ideal of human oneness this year's prize winner has raised a burning torch, a shining name, the name of Solidarity. He has lifted the torch unarmed; the word, the spirit and the thought of freedom and human rights were his weapons. And, as is so often the case, the struggle involved great personal sacrifice, even though the object was something as simple as the workers' right to establish their own organizations. This is a right which, again, is confirmed in the world community's declaration of human rights.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has evaluated Lech Walesa's contribution in this field as being of essential importance in the campaign to establish the universal freedom of organization in all countries. It is in just this context that the name "Solidarity" has its deepest and most wide- ranging meaning. Lech Walesa's contribution is more than a domestic Polish concern; the solidarity for which he is spokesman is an expression of precisely the concept of being at one with humanity; therefore he belongs to us all. The world has heard his voice and understood his message; the Nobel Peace Prize is merely a confirmation of this.

Lech Walesa has made the name "Solidarity" more than an expression of the unity of a group campaigning for special interests. Solidarity has come to represent the determination to resolve conflicts and obliterate disagreement through peaceful negotiation, where all involved meet with a mutual respect for one another's integrity.

Conflicts and disagreements can be various, and can lead to many different reactions. Those involved will inevitably be faced with complicated decisions. This was the situation one August day in 1980, when Lech Walesa climbed over the steel fence of the Lenin yards in Gdansk, took the microphone and at a stroke became the leader of Polish solidarity. He was faced with overwhelming difficulties; the choice of strategy was not easy. The goal was clear enough: the workers' right to organize and the right to negotiate with the country's officials on the workers' social and economic situation. But which of the many available paths would lead him to this goal?

This is not the occasion to evaluate the political situation Lech Walesa found himself in. Suffice it to say that it was difficult. More interesting to us now is the fact that Walesa's chosen strategy was that of peace and negotiation. And, as always in such situations, the willingness to negotiate implied the willingness to compromise - here because it was obvious that the opponent was also fighting adverse conditions, both economic and political. Solidarity came to represent, as a result of a mobilization of the national will - the so called "Polish social opposition", the possibility of a solidarity of opinion in the whole nation. This was not an opposition which involved the use of physical power. Rather, it was a question of a spiritual or intellectual power which, because of its universal acceptance in the populace, would permeate the system and dissolve conflicts from within.

By following this peaceful course, without resorting to violence, Solidarity became a rapidly expanding movement. The courage which Lech Walesa showed in stepping forward openly and unarmed was overwhelmingly rewarded by the millions of Polish workers and farmers who joined him in his struggle.

Thus, in awarding the Peace Prize to Lech Walesa today, the Committee wishes it not only to be seen as a token of respect, but also as an expression of gratitude for the peaceful courage he showed when choosing his course.

That Walesa and the movement he leads are in keeping with the highest of human ideals is confirmed not least by the close connections which have existed between Solidarity and the Polish church. This interdependence is based not on common political interests, but rather on an ideological unity in the perception of human value and human rights.

It has not escaped the Committee's notice that the Polish church, which is a popular church in a way that few European churches are, has been so consistent in its support of Lech Walesa; this has given Solidarity an invaluable moral strength. One has great expectations of the role the church can come to play in Polish society given its standing among the people.

As outsiders we are particularly aware of the way in which Solidarity - also through its attachment to the church - has shown its willingness for peace and reconciliation. We have seen them gather in their tens of thousands in and around the churches in prayer for their land and cause. We have seen them water with their tears the wreaths of the victims of the fight for freedom. And we have understood that their unarmed battle is a battle they fight not only for their own sake, but also for all liberty-loving people the world over.

It is in this perspective that the Norwegian Nobel Committee has seen Lech Walesa's contribution. The way he chose was the way of negotiation, peace and reconciliation.

In the world we live in it is shockingly clear that détente and the peaceful resolution of conflicts is more necessary than ever before. We have seen too much of what the brutal use of power can lead to. If history has taught us anything, it is that the use of violence and power can, in the long run, only mobilize the powers of death.

Unfortunately, we have also learned that the voice of history does not always tell of victory for humanity and peace. It is pertinent to ask whether idealistic and morally sound attitudes do, in fact, have any chance of success.

This question can, of course, also be raised in the case of Lech Walesa. True enough, it would be strange if the causes he represents did not succeed, if only in the long run. He was not a political trouble maker: his concerns were rather the Polish workers' interests and current demands. But such demands are not always successful, even when they are as justified as they are in Lech Walesa's case.

No, Lech Walesa raised no revolutionary banner, and espoused no other weapon than the peaceful strike weapon which is recognized by the world community. Neither did he claim support from the declarations of human rights emanating from the United Nations and the Helsinki agreement. He wished only to negotiate. Two things alone were of pressing interest: the workers' social conditions and their right to negotiate.

The background to this singlemindedness was the simple fact that these rights were not recognized. This had led to outbreaks of universal bitterness on several occasions previously - in 1956, in 1970, and so again in 1980. All of these outbreaks were concerned with precisely these problems: social conditions, freedom of expression and the right to organize. [Fellow Cambodians, sounds familiar???]

One can reasonably wonder why it should be so difficult to achieve recognition for such aims. Those who know but a little of the history of the international labor movement will be aware that such difficulties have always been present. It is still remarkable, however, that working people's elementary rights can be denied, irrespective of to which ideology or economic system the respective countries belong. One ought, perhaps, to be able to believe that there are boundaries behind which it is not necessary to campaign for workers' rights; such boundaries obviously don't exist.

It is clear that, although Lech Walesa primarily campaigned for elementary social rights without challenging the established power structure, his campaign had inevitable political and ideological overtones. His campaign has also been necessarily a campaign for human rights, and, as such, inevitably interpreted as an obstruction against the system by the political authorities.

As the political opposition to Solidarity grew, its own consciousness of standing for humanity and human rights became clearer. It became increasingly obvious that Lech Walesa's campaign for workers' rights was from the very beginning a contribution to the general campaign for human rights in the world. This connection was emphasized more and more - especially by intellectual groups within the movement, and also by the Polish church.

Campaigners for human rights, independent of where in the world they have lived and worked, have always had one common problem: How can the idealistic goal be realized when one is obliged, at the same time, to take into account the practical possibilities in the given situation. Is it wise to moderate demands and campaign for a step-by-step improvement?

This problem faced Lech Walesa. Was a cautious course - with the possibility of gaining some ground - the right one? Or should one risk - and stand to lose - everything? It is impossible to understand the Polish Solidarity movement without being aware of this problem.

A realistic evaluation of the existing situation would suggest that the best course was to aim for a combination of the existing one party government with a social pluralism which permitted the freedom to organize and negotiate - at any rate in the future. Such a solution was the first negotiating model.

We know now that even this moderate strategy failed. Solidarity is today a forbidden organization. The negotiations and the strikes which were designed to emphasize the seriousness of the negotiations led to the state of emergency and the arrest and imprisonment of Lech Walesa.

And, even though the state of emergency is rescinded and Walesa is freed, his freedom is limited. His own evaluation of the situation has not permitted him to be present here today. The Peace Prize laureate's seat is empty; it won't be his voice we hear. Let us therefore try even harder to listen to the silent speech from his empty place.

At the present time, Lech Walesa cannot be presented as a victor at the end of a struggle full of sacrifice. His chosen course was not as short and easy as that. And it could seem that the goals he set himself are just as distant still.

But is Lech Walesa really silent today? Is he completely without victory? Has his cause suffered defeat? Many are of the opinion that his voice has never been stronger and reached further than it does now. The electrician from Gdansk, the carpenter's son from the Vistula valley has managed to lift the banner of freedom and humanity so high that the whole world can once again see it. The power of his belief and vision is unweakened. His actions have become a chapter in the history of international labor, and the future will recognize his name among those who contributed to humanity's legacy of freedom. Once again the stone rejected by the builder has become a cornerstone; this time a cornerstone in the building of freedom and democracy which humanity, with varying degrees of success, is attempting to raise in our world.

It is in any case certain that Lech Walesa's efforts have an important message for our times. It is the Committee's opinion that he stands as an inspiration and a shining example to all those who, under different conditions, fight for freedom and humanity.

If, in a future which we hope is not too distant, there should again be attempted a compromise between the Polish authorities and the country's workers and farmers, Lech Walesa's participation will be both necessary and indispensable.

For he is a victor in the eyes of the ordinary worker or farm laborer; he is a victor in the eyes of the people and their church. And he is one of the great spokesmen in the world today for the longing for freedom that can never be silenced.

Lech Walesa has made humanity bigger and more inviolable. His ambivalent good fortune is that he has won a victory which is not of this, our political, world. The presentation of the Peace Prize to him today is a homage to the power of victory which abides in one person's belief, in his vision and in his courage to follow his call.

A view from the outside

Abdul Gaffar Peang-Meth, once a resistance fighter during the 1980s, now teaches at the University of Guam.

Monday, 29 June 2009
Written by SEBASTIAN STRANGIO
The Phnom Penh Post

A CHIEF EXECUTIVE WHO HOLDS EXECUTIVE, LEGISLATIVE AND JUDICIAL POWERS IS A TYRANT AND AN OPPRESSOR.

Former resistance fighter Abdul Gaffar Peang-Meth talks about his past and Cambodia's state of affairs in the post-Khmer Rouge era.

Educated in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, Abdul Gaffar Peang-Meth returned to Cambodia in 1980 to join the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF) - one of the three factions resisting the Vietnamese occupation during the 1980s. After unsuccessfully running for election with the Liberal Democratic Party in 1993, he returned to academic life and now teaches political science at the University of Guam. In an interview with the Post, he reflects on his time in the resistance and the current state of Cambodian politics.

Many of your old colleagues from the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF) are still living in Cambodia today. What made you decide to leave the country permanently?
"Permanently" is an eternity, contrary to what Lord Buddha teaches: There's no such thing. Cambodians should live in Cambodia, and I respect the different reasons my ex-KPNLF colleagues have made to do so. My heart goes out to those who have no choice but to endure oppression. Whether under the Khmer monarchy, the Khmer Republic or the KPNLF, I believe unless a person is permitted and encouraged to think freely and critically, to innovate, to develop to his or her full potential, no endeavor s/he is involved in, whether commercial or political, is going to succeed. I don't see Phnom Penh's sky as hospitable to my way of thinking. Anyone can help the nation from anywhere.

From your vantage point overseas, how do you see the current trajectory of Cambodia's development?
There's no question that Cambodia today, with more roads, bridges, modern buildings, is more appealing than under the Khmer Rouge. But the rich get richer while nearly half of the population lives below the poverty level, and many live off the city's dumping grounds. The current regime's disdainful lack of good governance hurts the people most, and points to one direction: an authoritarian one-party rule legitimised by elections, which the international community had dubbed below international standard, but foreign donors let pass. How many fewer threats, how much less intimidation make the elections "more free and fair"? Does a government that sells natural resources for private gain, evicts the weak and underprivileged from their homes and land for development by the wealthy, employs lawsuits against its citizens and lifts the immunity of lawmakers whose words and opinions aren't in agreement with it, represent progress toward a more democratic future? A chief executive who holds executive, legislative, and judicial powers is a tyrant and an oppressor.

How do you perceive the role of the international community in Cambodia?
The role of the international community and the donor countries should be to ensure the implementation of the 1991 Paris Accords on Cambodia - in which the world invested $2 billion. It's their failure to implement the stipulations in the accords that has led to Cambodia's current situation. They cannot hope to build a sustainable economy and a democratic system in Cambodia by turning a blind eye to abuses of power and rampant corruption, when by so doing the current one-party rule is allowed to become further entrenched.

Do you think the Khmer Rouge tribunal - in light of corruption allegations - can bring justice to Cambodian survivors of the KR regime?
There cannot be justice, nor national reconciliation and healing, when responsibility for the brutality visited upon an estimated 1.7 million victims is assigned to only five officials while several thousand other perpetrators are walking free today. Unless the victims are satisfied that the accused have been accorded their due, the KRT is just a sham and talk of judicial corruption is a distraction. Some Cambodians have challenged the world community to establish a witness protection program to allow living witnesses to appear and talk freely and without fear.

You come from a Cham family that was closely involved in Democrat Party politics in pre-revolutionary Cambodia. How did this experience inform your political views?
My father socialised me politically beginning in my elementary school days to democratic principles and concepts. He introduced me to some figures in the Democratic Party such as Pach Chhoeun and Svay So. I read the Pracheatheptei (Democrat) newspaper, attended political campaign rallies. Personal and national experiences also shaped my political views. When my parents' financial fortunes crumbled, our house was sold to then Siem Reap governor Dap Chhuon, who allowed us to stay in the lower level of the house.

But Dap Chhuon, who was implicated in a plot with South Vietnamese officers against the royal government, was shot and killed and Lon Nol's soldiers surrounded the house, placing us under house arrest. The morning after, our residence was searched. Old copies of the Pracheatheptei and a copy of the Pracheachon (The People) newspaper in the house were confiscated, and we were instructed to read only the ruling party's Sangkum newspaper. That experience has affected me throughout my life.

What led you to support Lon Nol's Khmer Republican Regime during the early 1970s?
Being Cambodian-born of Cham descent has caused me to be particularly sensitive to the regional Vietnamisation and annexation of territories by Vietnam. When the Communist Vietnamese forces occupied some 3,500 square kilometres of Khmer soil from the northeast down to the sea in the south as sanctuary from the war with the free South Vietnamese and their American allies, Cambodia's neutrality was violated and my support for those who rose up against the Vietnamese forces on Khmer soil was natural. It may have been foolish for a Khmer David to confront the Vietnamese Goliath at a time when the Americans were looking for a way to disengage, but opting to trade national territorial sovereignty and territorial integrity because the political wind appeared to favour the Communists was not in the nation's interest. Khmers who stood opposed to the Vietnamese occupying forces espoused republican ideals. In March 1970 many who took on the republican cause, many who gave their lives in that struggle, did so not because of personal allegiance to [coup leaders] Lon Nol or [Prince] Sirik Matak, but because they believed in democratic principles.

Whatever happened to the "republican era"? Life evolves, political pendulums swing. There is no history, someone said, only interpreters of historical events. For different reasons, old supporters of republicanism have been silent. But there are young Khmers today who believe in the republican ideals, appreciate and recognise the work of those who have died for human integrity and republicanism. Some young Khmers have picked up the flag of republicanism and are moving forward. I supported the republican ideals and still do.

Why did you join the KPNLF after the fall of the Khmer Rouge?
I seek a meaningful life through serving a cause in which I believe. The KPNLF was created in 1979 to oppose the Maoist Khmer Rouge's return to power and to oblige the Vietnamese to withdraw from Khmer land. After the collapse of the Khmer Republic in 1975 and news of death and destruction by the Khmer Rouge emerged, I and a group of Khmer nationalists in America's East Coast formed an anti-Khmer Rouge committee. I wrote articles, translated articles into Khmer and English and mimeographed the bulletins for distribution. The bulletin, called Conscience, became Cambodian Appeal and after the KPNLF was proclaimed, I joined the group in the field, followed by some colleagues.

INTERVIEW BY SEBASTIAN STRANGIO

Anti-communist Viet Tan member deported by Hanoi for allegedly trying to find a way to enter VN through Cambodia

Member of Viet Tan terror anti-communist group deported

05/19/2009
VOVNews/VNA

A member of the Viet Tan terroristanti-communist group has been expelled from Vietnam in accordance with a decision made by the Minister of Public Security.

Nguyen Van Be, an Australian of Vietnamese origin born in 1952, was sent back to Australia from Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City on May 18 in the presence of the Australian Deputy Consul General in Ho Chi Minh City, Anna Murray.

Be said he arrived in Vietnam on April 25 with the excuse that he was visiting relatives. In fact, he had received orders from Dang Quoc Sung, a “central committee” member, and Le Anh, a key figure in the Viet Tan group, to take photos of the Ha Tien border gate in southern Kien Giang province and the Moc Bai border gate in Tay Ninh province.

He was instructed to assess ways of traveling between Vietnam and Cambodia in order to help the Viet Tan group set up a network to illegally smuggle their members and weapons into the country.

Be was also asked by Sung to photograph the US Consulate in HCM City.

On May 9, Vietnam’s police took Be into custody, along with his photos of the border gates and the US Consulate.

Be admitted he had broken Vietnamese law, supplied details of his accomplices and asked for clemency.

Thai PM's Comments Spark Outrage [-Samak "insensitive, inflammatory and plainly inaccurate" statement criticized]

A member of a Thai political faction strikes at the lifeless body of a hanged student outside Thammasat University in Bangkok in this Oct. 6, 1976 file photo. Police stormed the university after students demanded expulsion of a former military ruler and barricaded themselves in the school. Haunted by his past, Samak Sundaravej has sparked an unprecedented debate on his alleged role in a massacre of student protesters three decades ago. Defying photographic evidence and witnesses' accounts of the carnage of Oct. 6, 1976, Samak said during an interview with CNN that "one unlucky guy" was killed that day. (AP Photo/Neal Ulevich, File)

By AMBIKA AHUJA

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — When Samak Sundaravej became Thailand's prime minister on Feb. 6, pundits wondered how long it would take for his pugnacious streak to emerge.

Less than two weeks, as it turns out.

The trigger for the uproar was a CNN interview that touched on a massacre of Thai student protesters in 1976.

Samak denied having any role in the carnage and claimed that only one person died that day — even though by Thailand's own official count the death toll was 46 and some put it in the hundreds.

"No deaths, one unlucky guy being beaten and being burned," Samak said. "Only one guy died that day."

Violence was unleashed that day on leftist student demonstrators gathered to protest the return from exile of Prime Minister Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn, one of a dictatorial triumvirate who had been ousted by a student-led uprising three years earlier.

Film and photos from the time showed security forces and right-wing paramilitary troops firing weapons into the campus of Bangkok's Thammasat University; protesters being shot, beaten, set ablaze; bodies mutilated and dragged around a football field.

Samak's dismissal of one of the country's most traumatic events sparked public outrage and intense soul-searching. It spotlighted a subject that has until now been all but taboo. A blanket amnesty shielded the perpetrators, and a later government had honored Thanom.

Thai democracy has always had an uneasy relationship with the military. Samak's own premiership marks the return of elected government after yet another coup and a 16-month spell of military rule.

"How many people in Thailand actually know about what happened then? It's not even in the history textbooks in our school curriculum," said historian Charnvit Kasetsiri, a former rector of the university attacked in 1973. "The ruling elite want it forgotten because it goes against the mainstream conservatism that is preferred in Thailand."

Newspapers have seized on the massacre to criticize Samak, and his remarks have been raised repeatedly in parliament.

They were "insensitive, inflammatory and plainly inaccurate," the English-language Bangkok Post commented. Samak "knows very well what went on because he played a key role."

Critics say Samak's anti-communist rhetoric on radio and at rallies at the time helped stoke a violent anti-left atmosphere against a backdrop of communist takeovers of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. In a polarized Thailand, the critics say, the hard right's motto was "It's no sin to kill communists."

As interior minister following the incident, Samak is said to have had hundreds of "leftists" arrested. But he insists he had nothing to do with the massacre, and argues that if he had blood on his hands, he wouldn't be a vote-winner today.

Analysts said Samak's controversial remarks could cost him allies.

"It has become a hot issue that might be a rallying point, bringing his current political allies and his opposition together," said Kanokrat Lertchoesakul, a professor at Chulalongkorn University. "It's an emotional issue for many people across today's political spectrum."

Chaturon Chaisaeng, a senior politician and Samak's supporter, is among many contemporary politicians who were leftist student leaders in 1976. On Saturday, Chaturon said Samak "should gather accurate information before speaking" about the incident.

After the massacre, Thanom remained in Thailand following his return to the country as a Buddhist monk. In 1999 Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, himself a democrat with a long history of fighting dictatorships, signed off on a state honor for Thanom, sparking a controversy at the time.

Neither Thanom nor his two former ruling partners resumed any political role.

Thanom also tried to rehabilitate his image, arguing that he was not responsible for the Oct. 6 violence.

When the field marshal died in 2004, he was cremated in a royally sponsored ceremony presided over by Queen Sirikit.

One result of the new prime minister's remarks, said historian Charnvit, is that it gives Thais an opportunity to re-examine "a traumatic history that hasn't healed," and may force the guilty to answer for their crimes.

Survivors Detail Suharto-Era Massacres

Members of the Youth Wing of the Indonesian Communist Party (Pemuda Rakjat) are guarded by soldiers as they are taken by open truck to prison in Jakarta, in this Oct. 30, 1965, file photo. Historians estimate that between 300,000 and 800,000 Indonesians were killed in Gen. Suharto's bloody rise to power from 1965 to 1968, the worst mass slaughter in Southeast Asia's modern history after the Khmer Rouge killing fields in Cambodia. A frenzy of anti-communist violence stained rivers with blood and littered the countryside with the bodies of teachers, farmers and others. (AP Photo/File)
Markus Talam speaks during an interview in Blitar, East Java, Indonesia, Thursday, Jan. 10, 2008. Hiding out in the dense, humid jungle, Talam watched Indonesian soldiers herd manacled prisoners from trucks, line them up and mow them down with round after round of automatic weapons fire. It was 1968, and the killings were part of a final offensive by forces under Gen. Suharto to wipe out the communist party and secure his position as leader of Indonesia, now the world's most populous Muslim nation. (AP Photo/Trisnadi)
Putmuinah speaks during an interview in Blitar, East Java, Indonesia, Thursday, Jan. 10, 2008. Public interest in reviving a turbulent past is muted in the largely poor country, where people are more concerned with day-to-day survival, said Putmuinah, an 80-year-old former communist city council member in Blitar. Historians estimate that between 300,000 and 800,000 Indonesians were killed in his bloody rise to power from 1965 to 1968, the worst mass slaughter in Southeast Asia's modern history after the Khmer Rouge killing fields in Cambodia. (AP Photo/Trisnadi)

By ANTHONY DEUTSCH

BLITAR, Indonesia (AP) — Hiding out in the dense, humid jungle, Markus Talam watched Indonesian soldiers herd manacled prisoners from trucks, line them up and mow them down with round after round of automatic weapons fire.

It was 1968, and the killings were part of a final offensive by forces under Gen. Suharto to wipe out the communist party and secure his position as leader of Indonesia, now the world's most populous Muslim nation.

"They gunned them down and dumped their bodies in a mass grave dug by other prisoners. I remember the sound of the guns clearly: tat-tat, tat-tat, tat-tat ... over and over again," said Talam, 68, who was later jailed for 10 years after being named a leftist sympathizer.

Suharto, who died on Sunday at a Jakarta hospital, seized control of the military in 1965 and ruled the country for 32 years, suppressing dissent with force and supported by an American government at the height of the Cold War.

Estimates for the number killed during his bloody rise to power — from 1965 to 1968 — range from a government figure of 78,000 to 1 million cited by U.S. historians Barbara Harff and Ted Robert Gurr, who have published books on Indonesia's history. It was the worst mass slaughter in Southeast Asia's modern history after the Khmer Rouge killing fields in Cambodia.

A frenzy of anti-communist violence stained rivers with blood and littered the countryside with the bodies of teachers, farmers and others.

"They used to dump the bodies here," recalled Surien, a 70-year-old woman who lived near a bay used as an execution ground. "People called it the beach of stinking corpses because of the smell."

The CIA provided lists of thousands of leftists, including trade union members, intellectuals and schoolteachers, many of whom were executed or sent to remote prisons.

Another 183,000 died due to killings, disappearances, hunger and illness during Indonesia's 1975-1999 occupation of East Timor, according to an East Timorese commission sanctioned by the U.N. Similar abuses left more than 100,000 dead in West Papua, according a local human rights group. Another 15,000 died during a 29-year separatist rebellion in Aceh province.

In recent interviews around the city of Blitar, a former communist stronghold, survivors of the atrocities recounted a life on the run, living in caves, being beaten and beheadings of other captives.

"I am disappointed. I saw great cruelties and am lucky I am not dead," said Talam, whose simple two-room home overlooks a valley dotted with overgrown mass graves.

Dragging on a clove-cigarette with trembling hands, he described how he was detained by police but escaped. He stumbled across dead bodies in shallow graves and slept in dank caves with hundreds of others, eating what the jungle had to offer for 50 days, until being picked up.

Talam, a former member of a left-wing union for park rangers, said he was tortured and beaten repeatedly during interrogations while detained on remote Buru island, where about 12,000 political prisoners were held, 1,100 miles east of the capital, Jakarta. "Why has no one been put on trial?" he asked.

In fact, the dark era remains largely unknown to many Indonesians. Those believed responsible still wield influence in politics and the courts. Details of the communist purge are banned from school books, and the military has blocked efforts by relatives to unearth mass graves.

Near Blitar, a prominent monument and museum honors the crushing of the communist threat, and the Communist Party is still banned in Indonesia today.

There is no official record of the shootings Talam said he witnessed by the Indonesian army near Blitar, which lies 310 miles east of Jakarta.

Though Suharto was swept from power in a 1998 pro-democracy uprising in this nation of 235 million people, no one has ever been tried for the bloodletting, in part because some of Suharto's former generals remain in powerful posts today.

"One of the enduring legacies of Suharto's regime has been the culture of impunity," said Brad Adams, the head of Human Rights Watch Asia.

Moreover, public interest in reviving a turbulent past is muted in the largely poor country, where people are more concerned with day-to-day survival, said Putmuinah, an 80-year-old former communist city council member in Blitar.

"The ones who should be held accountable for those crimes are Suharto, his government and his regime," she said. "Suharto ordered the elimination of communists and left-wing sympathizers."

Putmuinah hid in a cave south of Blitar before being picked up and detained for 10 years. "They robbed me of the opportunity to raise my seven children," she said.

"They beheaded many of us because we were members of the union for women," she added. "I was spared torture because I knew the commander who arrested me."

Suharto's regime capitalized on existing tensions between Muslims and atheist communists, inciting the nation's powerful Islamic groups to join the purge.

Hasyim Asyhari, 67, a former member of a conservative Sunni Islamic youth group in the Blitar region, said the group received army orders to identify, hunt down and kill communists.

He said he is proud of saving the nation from communist domination and helping "turn communist sympathizers into good Muslims."

"We used farm tools, daggers and clubs" to kill prisoners, Asyhari said in an interview. "I followed the orders of the government."

Associated Press reporter Irwan Firdaus in Jakarta contributed to this report.

Democratic pebble in Vietnam's shoe

By Shawn W Crispin
Asia Times (Hong Kong)

KUALA LUMPUR - Before an audience of enrapt young ethnic-Vietnamese pro-democracy advocates, the political dissident spelled out his movement's non-violent strategy for undermining Vietnam's ruling Communist Party's pillars of political power.

Behind the speaker hung conspicuously the red-and-gold striped flag of the former South Vietnam, a still potent symbol for the country's post-1975 diaspora. So potent, in fact, Vietnamese diplomats requested on January 5 that Malaysian officials remove the flag from the civil society-promoting conference, which assembled 200 ethnic-Vietnamese youth from around the world, including from Vietnam.

The Vietnamese officials also claimed that some of the conference's speakers promoted terrorism inside Vietnam during their presentations and told their Malaysian counterparts that if the dissident flag was allowed to fly, it could complicate bilateral ties only days before an official Vietnamese delegation was due to arrive in Malaysia. The flag, nonetheless, remained aloft throughout the event.

The symbolic skirmish marked the latest confrontation on an international stage between Vietnam's Communist Party and the exile-run, pro-democracy Viet Tan. On November 17, Vietnamese authorities arrested and jailed a group of Viet Tan members, including US, French, Thai and Vietnamese citizens, who distributed fliers calling for non-violent democratic change. Four of the six foreign nationals have since been released, with one American and one Thai citizen still in detention.

Vietnam's state-controlled media have since taken to accusing Viet Tan of terrorism - charges the US ambassador to Vietnam has publicly contested. The Communist Party's strong response, after years of publicly ignoring the underground movement and its frequent calls from overseas for democracy, points to an official squeamishness about Viet Tan’s rising profile and increasingly daring in-country civil disobedience campaign.

Last year the Vietnamese government cracked down hard on pro-democracy activists, including against the loosely organized protest group Bloc 8406. For its part, Viet Tan claims to be Vietnam’s second-largest political organization, trailing only the Communist Party, which since seizing power and reunifying the country in 1975 has maintained a monolithic hold on power.

Viet Tan declines to reveal its membership figures, saying its ultimate strength lies in the power of its ideas, not its numbers, but also that its growing network includes both exile-based and in-country members. After operating underground for nearly 25 years, Viet Tan members say they are now in the process of bringing the party above ground, with plans to implement its 10-program action plan, including grassroots activities to improve social welfare, restore civil rights and promote pluralism openly inside Vietnam.

Burying the past

Viet Tan's origins somewhat controversially stem from the National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam (NUFLV), a group established by exiled Vietnamese in 1980 which aimed to topple the Communist Party-led government through a popular uprising, which to date has notably failed to materialize. Two years later, Viet Tan grew out of this movement along the Thai, Cambodian and Lao borders, advocating peaceful political change through underground activities.

The Vietnamese government has frequently accused the NUFLV of funneling arms and fomenting armed struggle inside Vietnam - charges one current Viet Tan member characterizes as a "misunderstanding" and "misperception". In 2004, Viet Tan surfaced for the first time as a public organization in Berlin, Germany, symbolically where Soviet-led communism fell, and formally announced the dissolution of the NUFLV.

Those familiar with Viet Tan's history say that the 2004 announcement and the party's recommitment to non-violent struggle was at least partially influenced by the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the US and Washington's subsequent recategorization of several armed resistance groups as terrorist organizations.

A competing interpretation points to the generational change inside the party, where the first generation of political refugees who initiated Viet Tan are slowly being replaced by a new generation of Western-educated professionals who are more willing to seek a political accommodation with the Communist Party with the implementation of democratic reforms.

To be sure, that's still a political long shot, particularly in light of the government's recent counter-propaganda campaign against the party. Consider, for instance, Duy Hoang, 37, the second-youngest member on Viet Tan's executive committee, as a gauge of the Vietnamese government’s antagonism towards the party. Hoang fled Vietnam when he was three years old and was raised and educated in California, where he received degrees in economics and political science.

For nearly a decade he served as an investment banker at the World Bank-affiliated International Finance Corporation (IFC). However his appointment last year to head Deutsche Bank's investment banking activities in Vietnam was shot down by government authorities, apparently over a critical op-ed he penned in an international newspaper in 2005, coinciding with the 30-year anniversary of the Vietnam War's end, according to Hoang. The authorities may have also been unnerved by Hoang's in-country family connections, which includes a high-ranking cadre in the Communist Party's central committee

Hoang recently quit his job at the IFC and now works full-time calculating Viet Tan's next moves. He believes the Communist Party, in light of last year's accession to the World Trade Organization and this year's assumption of a temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council, is more sensitive than ever to outside pressure and garnering international support for Viet Tan's democratic cause is a key party strategy.

What a communist fears

Hoang also contends that the Communist Party fears in particular outside-inside linkages between pro-democracy groups, which he hopes may one day be unified in popular front demanding political change, akin to the so-called "color revolutions" in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. He points to the recent student-led nationalistic demonstrations in Hanoi against China's maneuvers in the contested Spratly Islands and farmer-led protests in Ho Chi Minh City against alleged state-backed land grabs as evidence of a growing civil society movement that is increasingly willing to confront the authorities with their complaints and grievances.

Indeed, one of the Viet Tan presentations at the recent youth conference featured a video demonstrating how political dissidents in Serbia had organized to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic's abusive regime in 2000. That particular movement was controversially known to receive financial support from the US Congress-funded International Republican Institute; according to party members, Viet Tan does not receive any US or other Western government funding but rather raises funds through business investments, share holdings and, to a lesser degree, donations.

At the same time, Viet Tan has developed strong connections on Capitol Hill. US officials have in recent years dangled economic carrots to persuade Vietnam's Communist Party government to undertake democratic reforms, including allowing for greater religious freedoms. Last May, Viet Tan chairman Do Hoang Diem was called on by the US National Security Council to a meeting in the Oval Office with President George W Bush to discuss Vietnam's rights situation.

Bush later publicly criticized the country's rights record when Vietnam's President Nguyen Minh Triet visited Washington. Despite such moral support, Viet Tan is clearly fighting an uphill battle, complicated by the fact the movement is managed mainly from overseas by people the Vietnamese authorities consider foreign nationals.

Despite its authoritarian and repressive ways, the Communist Party's self-appointed mandate will nonetheless remain strong as long as the economy continues its breakneck expansion, including last year's 8.5% GDP growth rate. In many rural areas, particularly in northern Vietnam, the Communist Party is still popular, particularly among the older generation who lived through the war and still views the three million strong political party as a national liberator.

Moreover, the government continues to implement World Bank and United Nations Development Program advised economic reforms and recently took onboard a certain civil society call for more participation in government planning approvals. Compared to Cambodia and China, where corrupt government officials have with impunity seized lands occupied by poor peasants, Vietnamese authorities have shown more sensitivity towards its aggrieved farmers, addressing land-grabbing complaints on a case-by-case basis. That would seem to indicate that certain upward pressures are impacting on the Communist Party's decision-making, a realization Viet Tan has made and is now trying to capitalize on through calls for more clean governance, social justice and political freedoms. Barring any sudden collapse in economic growth, political change in Vietnam is still most likely to emerge from Communist Party cadres themselves, including the younger generation who favor political reforms that move the party away from its traditional faceless functionary approach.

In recent years, the party has allowed certain candidates to the National Assembly to run under an independent rather than Communist Party banner - though only one such candidate was selected last year, down from a previous three representatives. That's clearly not the big bang sort of democratic reform Viet Tan envisages, and as the party ramps up its campaign of civil disobedience and the government retorts with accusations of terrorism, expect more crackdowns, confrontations and international outcry in the months ahead.

Shawn W Crispin is Asia Times Online's Southeast Asia Editor. He may be reached at swcrispin@atimes.com.

Vietnam deports another Viet Tan member

Nguyen Thi Thanh Van

13/12/2007
SGGP (Hanoi)

VietNamNet Bridge - Vietnamese authorities deported Wednesday a Vietnamese French national who took part in Viet Tan party plans to sabotage the Vietnamese state.

Nguyen Thi Thanh Van, 51 years old, was taken to Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat International Airport, to be flown back to France.

Van was caught November 17, 2007 at a friend’s home preparing to spread anti-State leaflets and was soon arrested on charges of “terrorism” under Article 84 of the Criminal Code.

During investigation, Van admitted to taking part in the Viet Tan party since late 1999, as a newscaster of the party’s “New Horizon” radio and a reporter for the reactionary “Democratic Viet Nam” newspaper under the “Free Viet Nam Alliance”, a side organization of the Viet Tan.

In 2007, Van returned to Viet Nam twice to take part in anti-state activities, including bringing 7,000 leaflets and 900 Viet Tan logos from Cambodia to Viet Nam for distribution.

She was caught November 17. Given her repentance, Vietnamese authorities decided not to prosecute her and instead deported her.

Van is the second member of Viet Tan to be expelled from Viet Nam.

On December 11, Truong Leon (Vietnamese name: Truong Van Sy), 54 years old, was deported to the US after being arrested last month with thousands of anti-state leaflets in Ho Chi Minh City.

Vang Pao refused bail, held in jail

Sacramento, California (Agencies) - Hundreds of supporters demonstrated outside a federal courthouse Monday as a magistrate refused to release Hmong leader and ex-general Vang Pao on bail while he awaits trial on charges of trying to overthrow the communist government of Laos.

Despite his age and deteriorating health, Vang Pao, 77, is too dangerous and too great a flight risk to be freed under any circumstances, US Magistrate Judge Edmund Brennan ruled after a 30-minute hearing.

Vang Pao and eight other Hmong elders were arrested June 4 on charges that they tried to buy nearly $10 million worth of military weapons and recruit mercenaries to unseat Laos's communist government.

A 10th defendant, retired California National Guard Lt. Col. Harrison Jack, is also charged, accused of trying to arrange the coup through an arms broker who turned out to be an undercover federal agent.

Hmong from across California and several other states packed the courtroom and filled a courthouse plaza and surrounding sidewalks for Vang Pao's detention hearing. Court security officials estimated that 500 to 1,000 Hmong showed up.

Most of the Hmong were dressed in white to show their peacefulness and purity, said Ka Va, who helped organise the rally.

They waved American flags, giant portraits of Vang Pao and signs calling for the release of the Vietnam War-era general whose guerrillas rescued downed American pilots and waged an ultimately futile covert war orchestrated by the CIA.

"This is how much this man is loved," said Thomas Heffelfinger, one of Vang Pao's attorneys, said over the noise of the crowd. "This reflects the general's commitment to a peaceful agenda."

Heffelfinger, a former federal prosecutor from Minnesota, said he was hired by Vang Pao's supporters to assist John Balazs, the Sacramento attorney who was appointed by the court to represent the general last week.

Heffelfinger said Vang Pao is innocent of the charges, which could bring him life in prison if he is convicted.

Balazs argued that Vang Pao could safely be released to home confinement with a virtual communications blackout: No phones, computers or other communications devices.

But Assistant US Attorney Bob Twiss told Brennan that Vang Pao's influence is so sweeping and unquestioned that he could organise his followers no matter what restrictions are imposed, perhaps sending messages through intermediaries or with a smuggled cell phone.

"Thousands of people came here on the day of his detention hearing," Twiss said in an interview. "If General Vang Pao were to pick up a cell phone, is there any doubt they wouldn't execute his order? To me, it (the rally) was an indication of his ability to effectuate action indirectly."

Vang Pao has foresworn violence and lobbied peacefully for the United States to protect Hmong still being persecuted in Laos, Heffelfinger said. Moreover, the general has had heart bypass and gallbladder surgery and a stroke, and suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes, he said.

"The mere fact that he has loyal followers does not make him dangerous," Heffelfinger said outside the courthouse. "The general is a man of peace."

Brennan nonetheless ordered Vang Pao detained. He also ordered the detention of two alleged coconspirators, Lo Thao and Nhia Vang, after brief separate hearings.

The general sat silently hunched over a table during the hearing, wearing a bright orange jail jumpsuit and listening through an interpreter.

Outside, supporters waved signs reading, "Honor your war heroes - don't jail them," and "Free our leader."

"He is like a supreme leader to all of us," said Silas Cha of Fresno, a leader of Hmong-American Concerned Citizens. "He is no threat to anyone, anywhere in the world. ... He is an American hero and a Hmong hero who has saved thousands of lives."

US Attorney McGregor Scott issued a statement saying his office respects the Hmong community's right to protest but expects they "will understand why we made the decisions we did" once more information becomes public.

Attorneys for the accused said they expect their clients to be indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury. The charges they face now were in a complaint filed by Scott's office. Their next hearing is set for Monday, when supporters are promising an even larger crowd.

Loose tongues foil 'Laos plot'

Jun 8, 2007
By Richard S Ehrlich
Asia Times (Hong Kong)

BANGKOK - After a US Justice Department undercover agent displayed a Stinger surface-to-air missile in a bugged Hilton hotel room in Sacramento, California, the motley crew of would-be revolutionaries began to suspect that they might be the victims of a "sting" operation. They were right.

A mysterious woman named Lisa - "last name unknown", as it appears on the indictment - was allegedly tasked to find out who the man with the Stinger really was and whether a gang of desperate Americans in California, and ethnic Hmong from Laos, were about to be busted.

The furtive Americans and Hmong allegedly boasted that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was "standing by and ready to roll" to ensure success for their clumsy coup attempt in Laos.

They didn't realize that their California restaurant meetings, anxious telephone conversations, and hurried chats in urban parking lots would appear this Monday in a 90-page affidavit by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The government takes a dim view of plotters using US soil to overthrow governments of nations "with which the US is at peace".

Weapons and ammunition, bought for US$100,000, were to be smuggled into Bangkok next Tuesday, June 12, followed by delivery of at least two Stinger missiles designed to shoot down aircraft, the ATF affidavit said.

To gain military-style training so they could overthrow the communist regime and rule the Southeast Asian nation, some of the men allegedly hoped to join the California Highway Patrol's Sacramento academy to learn "internal security, operations, and road control", because the campus has one of "the best law-enforcement training programs available".

After 10 men were arrested in California, where they were charged with a slew of felonies on Monday, attention focused on two of the jailed Americans who had undergone US military training, plus combat experience in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War era.

The CIA had run a bloody "secret war" in Laos after turning much of the country into a vast graveyard, gouged by massive US aerial bombardments. The country fell to the communist Pathet Lao about the same time that the North Vietnamese conquered the South and the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia.

The Vietnamese ousted the Khmer Rouge from Cambodia in 1979, and a decade later it became a multi-party democracy under United Nations-supervised elections. Laos, however, has remained a communist country, and thus a tempting target for Americans and Hmong bent on reversing history.

According to the ATF, the most prominent suspect is a 1968 graduate of the US Military Academy in West Point, New York, and Vietnam War veteran, Harrison Ulrich Jack. He left the US Army in 1977, and eventually retired from the California National Guard as a lieutenant-colonel, settling in Woodland, near Sacramento, where he ran "a consulting business focusing on environmental issues".

The ATF's other main suspect is the CIA's infamous former Hmong mercenary leader, General Vang Pao. Vang Pao became a US citizen as a reward for killing communists and others in Laos during the Vietnam War, when Washington paid a pittance to thousands of impoverished minority ethnic Hmong to fight and die so Americans would not be killed.

"Jack said he works directly for General Vang Pao and had worked for the Hmong community for the past 10 years," the undercover ATF agent said in the affidavit.

The group's alleged clandestine strategy, financing, and choice of weaponry provide an eerie look at how a group of wanna-be warriors in California attempted illegally to invade and occupy a country on the other side of the world.

Thailand, a US military ally, was to be the unwitting launching pad for the "military expedition" by the Americans and Hmong to infiltrate Laos. The alleged target was Vientiane, the languid capital of Laos, just across the Mekong River from Thailand.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Thailand provided the US with airbases, Thai troops, "rest and recreation" facilities and other assistance to fight in Laos, but Bangkok now deals with Laos as a friendly commercial partner and trendy tourist destination.

Last month, the California plotters said they had "a man on the ground [in Vientiane], walking around like a tourist with his digital camera, trying to get whatever pictures he can" of government buildings to obliterate, the ATF said.

Jack is portrayed as the gang's blabbermouth, relentlessly pushing the plot along while mindlessly providing the latest details to an undercover agent.

Jack also allegedly told the agent that the CIA was in on the plot. "I understood his statement to mean that the CIA was preparing to assist the Hmong insurgency once the takeover of Laos had begun," the agent said.

The conspirators "were intent on securing Vientiane and Long Chien, which Jack told me was a former CIA base", the agent reportedly said. Long Chien was a base for hundreds of aircraft during the war, including the CIA-owned Air America's planes.

"Jack told me his Hmong contacts had raised a lot of money through Air America but had not taken any money from the CIA," the ATF agent said, without elaborating.

"Harrison Ulrich Jack came to ATF's attention in the fall of 2006 when he reached out to a defense contractor whom he knew and inquired about purchasing 500 AK-47s," the affidavit said, referring to Kalashnikov assault rifles. "The defense contractor was very concerned, and went to the Phoenix ATF office."

An ATF agent in San Francisco, code-named "Steve", was assigned to Jack's case. "On February 7, 2007, acting in an undercover capacity as an arms dealer, I met with Jack, General Vang Pao" and about a dozen of Vang Pao's "Neo Hom" supporters, he said.

While they all munched lunch in the "Amarin Thai Restaurant in Sacramento", the wired agent recorded their conversations.

"After the meal, I offered to display the weapons I had available for sale. I walked Jack, Vang Pao, and the other Neo Hom members to a recreational vehicle that I had arranged to be parked close to the Thai restaurant.

"Audio and video recording devices were used while the targets were in the RV. Jack, Vang Pao, and approximately 12 Neo Hom members looked at and/or handled" machine-guns, grenade launchers, an anti-tank rocket, a Claymore mine, and C-4 plastic explosives "that they believed were for sale".

On May 9, confident that guns and ammo would soon be illegally delivered in Thailand, "Jack asked me if I had a preferred currency, and I told him I preferred US dollars as opposed to Thai baht.

"Jack and I discussed a finder's fee for Jack's role in brokering this, and possible future deals for weapons. I suggested a flat $7,500 fee for the initial transaction and a 3% fee for the next, presumably larger order," the agent said.

He said he later upped Jack's commission for a weapons deal worth $9.8 million, offering Jack 5%.

One of Jack's main comrades was would-be "president of Laos" Lo Cha Thao, who allegedly met with Jack and the ATF agent during much of the planning stage, while claiming to have 5,000 fighters inside Laos, waiting for the weapons.

Lo Cha Thao allegedly claimed he wanted to destroy several official buildings in Vientiane - "like September 11" - so people in Laos could see that the communist regime had lost its power to command and control.

"I showed the group several satellite images downloaded from Google of the area around the Vientiane Vattay [Wattay] International Airport and the Laos Royal Palace in Vientiane, Laos," the agent said.

Lo Cha Thao "asked me if the Stingers were capable of shooting down a MiG [warplane]. I told Lo that the Stinger was made to shoot down jet aircraft."

The ATF said Jack, Vang Pao, and four others wanted to buy two Stinger missiles after a Stinger was displayed to others in the group in the Hilton.

"Conspiracy to receive and possess missile systems designed to destroy aircraft" is one of several charges against Jack, Vang Pao and the others.

The CIA generously handed out Stingers to its Afghan "holy warrior" mujahideen during the 1980s to help the US-financed Islamist guerrillas win a 10-year-long war against the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan. After that war, numerous Stingers appeared on the black market. Washington belatedly offered rewards for their return amid fears that the shoulder-fired, heat-seeking rockets would be aimed at US commercial aircraft by anti-American rebels.

Richard S Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco. He has reported news from Asia since 1978 and is co-author of the non-fiction book of investigative journalism, Hello My Big Big Honey! Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews. He received Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism's Foreign Correspondents Award.