LAO MFA SPOKESMAN CONTINUES HARD LINE TOWARD HMONG

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 VIENTIANE 000639 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR EAP/MLS (BESTIC), BANGKOK FOR POL (SUTTON), BANGKOK FOR REF (SCHERER), PACOM ALSO FOR FPA E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/09/2017 TAGS: LA PGOV PHUM PREF PREL SUBJECT: LAO MFA SPOKESMAN CONTINUES HARD LINE TOWARD HMONG REF: A. BANGKOK 0596 ¶B. VIENTIANE 0453 ¶C. VIENTIANE 364 ¶D. VIENTIANE 288 VIENTIANE 00000639 001.2 OF 002 Classified By: AMBASSADOR RAVIC HUSO FOR REASONS 1.4 (B) AND (D) ¶1. (C) SUMMARY: MFA Spokesman Yong Chanthalangsy showed no flexibility in Lao Government positions regarding the Lao Hmong in Thailand in a lengthy conversation with Pol/Econ Chief. Yong said the "humiliation" of the Lao officials involved in the failure to repatriate 150 Hmong from Nong Khai in January is still active; the only disposition of this group's members acceptable to the Lao is to have them returned to Laos -- despite their UNHCR credentials. The larger group of 8000 Hmong in Thailand's Petchabun Province also has to be repatriated, according to Yong. Efforts of the international community -- including the EU and U.S. Congressional Representatives -- to intervene have been failures. Indeed the EU demarche resulted in the Thai MFA taking a very tough formal position on the issue. Yong suggested that the Lao may be prepared for a 3-step approach: 1) to have all the Hmong return, 2) stay for a period of time, and 3) then apply for emigration from Laos through normal applications to foreign Embassies in Vientiane. Once they have returned, and things have settled into place, according to Yong, they can go "anywhere they wanted." End Summary. ¶2. (C) Pol/Econ Chief raised a range of issues relating to the treatment by the Government of Laos (GOL) of its Hmong ethnic minority on August 10. MFA Press Department Director General and MFA Spokesperson Yong Chanthalangsy, who has been the GOL's most authoritative interlocutor with the international community on this issue, refused to budge on the treatment of the 150 Hmong who have been detained in the Immigration Detention Center in Thailand's Nong Khai Province since November and have been "locked down" in two small cells since late June after several group members escaped. P/E Chief cited reports of deteriorating conditions for the group and physical and psychological stress of its members. He argued that everyone involved in this situation would lose if any group members, especially the vulnerable children, were to die because of the sanitary conditions, lack of clean water, or poor food rations, or to attempt suicide. Why not let the group be moved from Nong Khai to a location in Thailand's Petchabun Province as the group had requested, he asked? ¶3. (C) Yong at first expressed doubt the group had requested to be moved to Petchabun. He then reverted to an informal proposal he had made in earlier conversations: for the international community to acquiesce in the Nong Khai group members being returned to Laos -- despite their UNHCR registration and referral to third countries. The GOL and the Royal Thai Government (RTG) needed a period of time to elapse to recover from the loss of face they both had suffered on January 30 when their joint attempt to deport the group had failed (ref A). After the group was repatriated, then "in one or two years the group members can apply to go live abroad" (and the GOL would no longer care). Later in the conversation, Yong reduced the time the group members would have to be in Laos to "six months" before they could quietly apply for emigration "anywhere they wanted." Pushed again on this issue, Yong firmly stated that "someone" had been so "humiliated" by the failure of the January 30 deportation that there was no way the GOL would agree to anything other than the group's return to Laos. (Note: we would guess Lao General Bouasieng Champaphanh, Chair of the Lao delegation to the Lao-Thai Joint Sub-Committee for General Border Security Cooperation, may be the person most angered by the January 30 events, although Yong himself was highly visible in the pre-departure ceremony at Nong Khai City Hall.) Yong concluded by noting that the GOL knew that many of the 21 girls from the group of 26 "missing Hmong children" who had been "found" in April and returned to their families had now made their way back to Thailand -- demonstrating that the GOL was not interested in monitoring even people involved in very sensitive situations after these situations had been resolved. ¶4. (C) Pressed by the P/E Chief to allow some form of screening of the 8000 Hmong in the holding camp in Petchabun, Yong similarly held firm about any compromise regarding this larger group. He argued that various recent steps to pressure Thailand to accede to international demands VIENTIANE 00000639 002.2 OF 002 regarding the Hmong have been failures. He cited as one example a strong response the RTG MFA had sent to the EU on June 22. The Thai diplomatic note dismissed the EU deeming "as refugees any citizens from Thailand's neighbouring countries entering Thailand illegally" as "tantamount to the European Union's interpretation that a situation of war or civil war still exists in those countries." The note also states that, "Such a position also raises the concern in the region whether the European Union is preparing a case for so-called humanitarian internavention." In Yong's estimation, the EU had been working from bad intelligence in its original demarche on the RTG, forcing the RTG into a harsh response which formalizes its stance. Although Yong did not specifically cite it, one sentence from the RTG MFA's statement would seem consistent with Yong's proposal that all the Hmong in Thailand should be sent back to Laos, and then later they could emigrate: "Any country wishing to receive Laotian Hmongs should contact the Lao PRD Government directly." Similarly, Yong pointed out that the letter from a group of U.S. Congressmen to the Thai King had only led, two days later, to the Thai Prime Minister's statement that the Hmong would be sent back to Laos in two months. Asked about the Thai Prime Minister's comment about a third ASEAN country monitoring the return, Yong admitted the two sides has not discussed this in detail although the "concept" had been agreed to. ¶5. (C) Asked for access to groups that had surrendered or had been repatriated earlier this year from Thailand (including the surrenders of groups of 350 in November 2006 and 450 in December, as well as the repartiations from Thailand of 31 Hmong in late May and 160 in early June),Yong commented that virtually all had been returned to their original home villages. Yong pointed out that for the GOL to resettle these people to new areas was very costly; sending them back to their home villages allowed the GOL to split the cost of the resettlement process with their families. This would be particularly important when the 8000 are reutrned from Petchabun. The GOL has set up one village for those few without home villages (who had been part of the traditional Hmong shifting slash-and-burn agriculture system). This new village at Pong Lak is about 40 kilometers from the city of Kasi in north central Vientiane Province. Yong promised that MFA would invite the Vientiane diplomatic community to visit Pong Lak by the end of August to see the 11 families from the group of 160 repatiated in early June and verify their living conditions were satisfactory. Yong admitted that sending people back to their home villages did not always work perfectly. Many had since moved on to the relatively prosperous Hmong concentration at Kilometer 52 in Vientiane Province, something which the GOL had not tried to prevent. Others had moved to Thongnamy and Viengthong, both in Bolikhamsai Province. ¶6. (SBU) One amusing sidelight of the discussion was Yong being interrupted by a phone call that advised him a group of Thai "protesters" had assembled in Nong Khai, Thailand, across the Friendship Bridge from Vientiane. Yong, somewhat nonplussed, told P/E Chief that more than 100 poor Thai people had assembled there because they were "fed up" with their lives in Thailand and were apparently trying to enter Laos. Both finished the discussion with the ironic vision of the first Thai "economic migrants" trying to backtrack the footsteps of the Hmong who had illegally crossed the Mekong looking for better lives -- and wound up in various holding centers in Thailand. Comment -------------- ¶7. (C) DG Yong has been very visible on Hmong issues, and he both reflects the decisions made by senior GOL officials and seems to have some ability to carve out flexibility upon occasion. Disappointingly, no such flexibility was apparent today. HUSO