DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: LAOS REWRITES ITS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 VIENTIANE 000447

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR EAP/MLS, DRL

E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/19/2016
TAGS: SOCI PGOV PINR LA
SUBJECT: DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: LAOS REWRITES ITS
PAST

Classified By: Ambassador Patricia M. Haslach, reason 1.4 (b) and (d).

Summary
--------------

1. (C) Laos isn't unique among countries whose governments
rewrite history to serve their own ends, but the Communist
leadership here has taken the process to its extreme. The
Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) has concocted a
black-and-white version of the recent past that is designed
purely to serve political ends. The pre-1975 Royal Lao
Government and Laos' "colonial oppressors" (Thailand, France
and the U.S.) are equally vilified. Unsurprisingly, the
Party has airbrushed the post-1975 period as well,
conveniently dispensing with the 1975-1986 "high socialism"
of reeducation camps, collectivized farms, defrocked monks
and refugee drain. Laos' young are learning nothing of their
real past, and the old find it convenient to forget. Few Lao
of any age seem to be aware of the extent to which their
history has been reconfigured by the regime. Therein lies
the danger: soothed by a fairy-tale history, the Lao people
are lulled into a complacency that leaves them ill-equipped
to deal with a changing world. End summary.

Lao history, the Communist way
--------------

2. (C) A visit to any of Vientiane's "museums" -- the Kaysone
Phomvihane Museum, National Museum, or the newly-opened Army
Museum -- is an eye-opener for anyone expecting a third-world
Smithsonian. These institutions are not about presenting a
balanced view of the past; they provide a near-fictional
account of Laos' heroic struggle against a series of
ill-intended colonial oppressors, from the Thai to the French
to the Americans. The central theme is the LPRP's
single-minded dedication to liberating and developing Laos.


3. (C) The displays (almost identical in the three museums in
spite of their disparate subjects) make few efforts at
serious scholarship: photos of what are clearly Vietnamese
soldiers in the Army Museum are labeled "Pathet Lao
fighters," presumably because the museum staff couldn't find
a picture of a Pathet Lao soldier anywhere near a front line.
A circa-1900 picture of "French colonial invaders" looks more
like some turn-of-the-century hunting party, and probably
was. What matters is not factual accuracy in the details but
the creation of an impression, of a good-versus-evil world
where Laos' Communists (with a little help from their
Vietnamese comrades) saved Laos from extinction and
single-handedly crafted the workers' paradise it is today.


4. (C) That theme, monolithic in its delivery, suffuses
modern-day Laos. It is being given even greater emphasis as
Laos moves farther from its revolutionary beginnings and
interest in the past wanes. Lao students learn this imaginary
version of history from their first years; the drumbeat
continues (for the minority who are given the opportunity)
right through high schools and university. Lao "history
books" take up the message. Histories that have been
published in the last decade, including a magnum opus
"History of Laos" and several heroic accounts of the Pathet
Lao struggle during the war (one authored, or so it says, by
the Deputy Defense Minister),would do Stalin proud. They
describe historical events that bear little resemblance to
the Lao history described by Thai or western scholars.
Beyond this, every speech, every newspaper article, and every
conversation with a Lao official that touches on Lao history
echoes this fictionalized rendering of the past.

Fiddling with the facts
--------------

5. (C) Laos is a one-party state, with a tightly-controlled
media and no free press, and there is no alternative to LPRP
official history except in the memories of those old enough
to have lived through it. One example of creative rewriting
that we've seen over the past year is the series of
anniversaries of diplomatic ties, including between the U.S.
and Laos. The Party has made a point of celebrating 50-year
anniversaries of relations between a number of countries and
"the Lao PDR," although the Lao PDR only came into existence
in 1975. Those earlier ties were with the Royal Lao
Government, but the Party clearly would prefer that footnote
be forgotten.


6. (C) Even the post-1975 period (the "independence period,"
the LPRP calls it, forgetting that the Royal Lao Government

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was both independent and held a seat in the UN for 20 years
before 1975) has not been immune from reinvention. The decade
after 1975 was indeed one that most people would as soon
forget: nearly all former officials and soldiers of the old
regime were sent to brutal reeducation camps, where many
died; the government instituted a harsh form of
collectivization that bred starvation in some areas; zealous
Party officials tried to abolish Buddhism; and at least a
tenth of the population voted with their feet and fled to
refugee camps in Thailand.


7. (C) But today, the Party makes almost no mention of what
Lao scholar Grant Evans refers to as the period of "high
socialism." Evans, an Australian scholar now with the Ecole
Francaise d'Exteme Orient (EFEO) in Vientiane, has been
especially critical of the Party's airbrushing of the recent
past. Lao discussions of the Lao PDR's history increasingly
ignore those first ten years, and only comment on events
since 1986, when Laos adopted economic reform. The mistakes
of the first decade are being conveniently written out of
history.

The Tham Pieu hoax
--------------

8. (C) The "Tham Pieu Tragedy" provides a case study in how
the LPRP is manipulating the past. According to the Lao
government, in November 1968 an American aircraft fired two
missiles into Tham Pieu cave in eastern Xieng Khouang
province, killing 374 innocent villagers who were sheltering
there. This incident was largely unknown until a few years
ago, when the government suddenly resurrected it as a
textbook American atrocity. Over time more details have been
added on the tragedy. The government now commemorates the
event each year on its anniversary with a gathering of senior
Party officials at the site, and recently opened a museum
near the cave, complete with graphic paintings of bloody
bodies in the aftermath of the attack. The story
approximates My Lai in its horrific details of hundreds of
innocents dying at the hands of bloodthirsty Americans.


9. (C) The big difference between Tham Pieu and My Lai is
that Tham Pieu is a lie. Villagers in the area know the
"official" story well, and will repeat it to any travelers.
Quietly, however, some Xieng Khouang natives (including the
son of the wartime governor of the province) have told us
that Tham Pieu was in fact a North Vietnamese arms dump and
hideout. The aircraft that fired the missile was most likely
a Royal Lao Air Force T-28, whose rockets set off secondary
explosions that killed numerous Vietnamese soldiers and
probably some civilians as well. The cave's location at the
entrance to the Ban Ban valley, the PAVN's main staging area
for attacks on the Plain of Jars, made it an unavoidable
target. The story is tragic, but the reality bears little
resemblance to the GoL's fantasy. Nevertheless, since the
Party incorporated Tham Pieu into its account of the war, the
details have been repeated so often that the GoL's version is
usually taken at face value. Some guidebooks dutifully
repeat the government's line, but the bible of Lao
backpackers, "Lonely Planet," notes that most of those killed
were Vietnamese and that Vietnam repatriated most of the
remains in the cave in the 1980's.


10. (C) With a young population and fewer people each year
who remember the pre-1975 period, the Communist version of
history, with Tham Pieu and a hundred other incidents, is the
only game in town. The Party is determined to make its
version real, borrowing a page from "1984," by telling the
story until it becomes fact. The spurt of new museums (the
Lao also opened a museum to the Lao PDR's first president,
the "Red Prince" Souphanouvong, concurrent with the new Army
Museum) and the release of half a dozen history books in the
last few years reveal a commitment to make their story stick.
In fifty years, who will know better? Riding the currents
from one regime to another, the Lao appear content with the
history they are fed.

Who will remember?
--------------

11. (C) Grant Evans has written about Laos' collective
amnesia and would like to fight the current, but as a
foreigner is at a disadvantage. He has recently written a
history of the royal family of Laos, focusing on its last 100
years and drawing on the recollections and collected
memorabilia of dozens of persons associated with the court in

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its last years. The book was a labor of love to preserve some
piece of Laos' last monarchs, consigned to the dustbin by the
regime (although bizarrely two statues of King Sisavang Vong,
who died in 1960, still stand in Vientiane and Luang Prabang,
left up by the regime after 1975 because they were gifts to
the Royal Lao Government from the Soviet Union).


12. (C) His book will never see the light of day in Laos, but
Evans has undertaken another history project with more
promise. With Swedish government funding, he has completed a
Lao translation of another of his works, "A Short History of
Laos." Evans told us the original chapter on the post-1975
period was "too sensitive" and was excised from the
translation, but the rest, including its discussion of the
war (with North Vietnamese aggression) was left intact. Evans
and his supporters hope to distribute the book in "urban
guerilla" fashion, handing out free copies to anyone
interested, since there is no hope the Ministry of
Information and Culture will sign off. The object, as Dr.
Evans has said, is to leave some reminder to the Lao people
that their past is far more shaded -- and more interesting --
than the version purveyed by the Communists.

Comment
--------------

13. (C) The Lao people are complicit in this Orwellian
rewriting of the past. Even those who were part of the old
system play along with the lie, pretending they were somehow
on the side of the Communists all along. History,
ultimately, simply doesn't matter to most people, and if the
government wants to change the past, so be it. No doubt the
Communists' job is made easier by the note of national pride
their history strikes in many Lao. To rank-and-file Lao, it
is a matter of honor, if not of historical accuracy, that the
LPRP fought off three colonial oppressors and single-handedly
rescued Laos from sublimation by imperialist powers.


14. (C) But the Lao are losing sight of where they have been,
forgetting their dramatic and colorful and turbid history.
By accepting at face value the Party's account of its
unbroken success in delivering independence and national
development, the Lao people have been lulled into a
complacency that does not allow them to judge critically
where they stand in the world. They have little sense of how
poorly the Party and government have served them, or how much
farther along Laos might have been if things had worked out
differently. The Party has largely succeeded in rewriting
the past, but at the cost of leaving the country with no real
sense of its future. End comment.
HASLACH