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

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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