Thursday, June 21, 2007

latest on vang pao

2 articles i pulled from vientianetimes.com about the ongoing vang pao story. sorry if yall are getting bored of this, but i am really amazed by the whole thing. the sacramento bee has the more interesting article if you don't have time to read both

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/225993.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070615/ap_on_re_us/laos_plot_3


to understand why the hmong are so intent on regime change in Laos, look at this video about the persecution of the hmong. beware, this is very graphic video posted on youtube - part of a larger series.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=LmSWXk1nFRc

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It still seems that US interference again just continually confuses issues in foreign countries. Would the Hmong be better off if the US weren't in Vietnam? Would they have had Lao-Hmong hatred anyway?

There is something to be said about having a laissez-faire doctrine in the US, which apparently the war 40 years ago in Southeast Asia didn't teach us.

jrm said...

yeah, i think you're right about the Lao-hmong hatred... the cia-backed hmong-mien resistance to the pathet Lao didn't surely help anything. whether your communist or otherwise, a group of mountain guerilla fighters continually coming at you with guns blasting doesn't really make you want to reach out and include them in your new government. right after my trip to Laos a few years back, the hmong shot up a bus - killing a dozen or so people, so this antagonism definitely isn't one-sided, and it definitely isn't just a thing of the 1970s.

we seem to see things so much in the present. the communists in se asia seemed very dangerous at the time i guess.

(u gotta see the documentary "bombies")

bug girl said...

I don't know why I watch the videos you link? They always make me cry.

jrm said...

yeah, sorry about that. it's weird because even though i know stuff like that is going on, it's a completely different experience to view it.