More than two months have passed since Thailand forcibly returned 4,500 Hmong refugees who had fled from Laos. For Hmong in Sacramento and elsewhere in the United States who have family there, the plight of these refugees has been excruciating, and frustrating. <\/p>\n
The U.S. government protested the forced repatriation and some members of Congress made noises about “reviewing” U.S. military aid to Thailand, but the evictions took place nonetheless.<\/p>\n
A U.S. Embassy official in Laos on Feb. 26 finally was allowed to visit the Laotian village where the Hmong have been housed since their expulsion from Thailand – but scripted events with Laotian officials ever-present are unlikely to produce a true picture of conditions.<\/p>\n
“You have the State Department saying the Hmong are fine, then you have the Hmong community hearing from their families in Laos about mistreatment,” says Nancy Ly of Sacramento, a member of the Hmong Leadership Steering Committee, a collaboration of 12 groups in five states. <\/p>\n
The State Department, she notes, wants hard evidence. But how do you get that when Laos and Thailand will not allow international groups to independently monitor or investigate conditions? <\/p>\n
The United States has a special responsibility in helping these refugees. It was, after all, the United States that recruited the Hmong to fight in the Vietnam conflict in the 1960s. When communist-backed forces took over Laos after the United States left in 1975, this country did accept Hmong refugees. Today, nearly 250,000 Hmong live in this country. The top cities for settlement are Minneapolis-St. Paul (44,000), Fresno (25,000) and Sacramento (22,000).<\/p>\n
At a minimum, our members of Congress and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ought to fight persistently for the following:<\/p>\n
• Some consequences to Thailand for the forcible return of refugees to Laos, which sets a terrible example internationally. <\/p>\n
• Unhindered and continuous access by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees and other humanitarian organizations to monitor the treatment of the Hmong and to conduct proper screening of the Hmong for internationally recognized refugee status. <\/p>\n
• Allowing refugees who qualify to resettle in third countries – including the United States, where the Hmong have family connections.<\/p>\n
One sign of hope is that the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, who is on a regional tour of Southeast Asia, stopped in Laos for two days of wide-ranging talks on U.S.-Lao relations last week. The Hmong refugee issue should be a priority in high-level diplomacy with Laos and Thailand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More than two months have passed since Thailand forcibly returned 4,500 Hmong refugees who had fled from Laos. For Hmong in Sacramento and elsewhere in the United States who have family there, the plight of these refugees has been excruciating, and frustrating. The U.S. government protested the forced repatriation and some members of Congress made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-425876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}