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“It is disconcerting that the Laotian government has
provided little transparency and granted only limited access to the
Hmong populations and refugees,” said Rep.
Honda visited another Hmong village in January with two other members of
broke the international refugee law principle known as non-refoulement,
which prevents asylum countries from forcibly expelling refugees. Among
the Hmong sent back were 158 refugees registered with UNHCR. The UNHCR
acknowledges that
The U.N. agency would not discuss the situation in
the Hmong camps without having visited them, but it hopes to have
access to the returnees by April.
Hundreds of thousands of Hmong now live in southern
is also one of the four countries that promised to shelter 70 of the
158 refugees and is ready to provide supplemental food and basic needs
assistance to the returnees.
According to Thai officials who accompanied Haymond,
the village has neither electricity nor a proper road connection to the
nearest city. Many of the Hmong brought their cell phones along with
them from
A leading Hmong rights advocate in
“It’s a game,” said
The visit to the Polikham village was a follow-up to
the Lao government’s promise to give the international community access
to the returnees. Dorsey said the
But according to Davy, any visit to the refugees
will be highly stage-managed, with Laotian government officials and
state media present, and is unlikely to portray anything but happy
pictures of the refugee situation.
Davy, who has spoken with U.S.-based relatives of
some of the returnees, said the Hmong were given only rice — 32 pounds
per family for a month — by the government. “So those who do not
receive help from relatives in
are not doing so well,” he said. “They cannot buy vegetables or meat.”
Health care is another issue the returnees complain about because they
don’t have access to proper medical treatment, he said.
A relative of a returnee in Polikham told Davy that they were prevented from approaching Haymond during his visit.
signed an agreement on the “voluntary” repatriation of the Hmong, but
in fact thousands of Thai soldiers were mustered during the
repatriation process.
After the
said the Lao government is building houses for each family, a mobile
phone station and a grocery for the villagers to buy food. There is
talk of extending electricity lines to the village. The government was
also building a new road to the village, which is 33 miles from the
nearest town. The current road washes away during the rains.
The Thai official, who couldn’t be quoted by name
because he was unauthorized to speak for his government, said he didn’t
find any signs of mistreatment of the villagers. The Lao government
might allow another diplomatic visit to the village “once everything is
in place,” he said.
Neither the
over the past week. “Talks are continuing with the (Lao) government
here to give international community regular access to the returnees,”
said Dorsey.
of the returnees is surrounded with razor wire and the returnees are
not allowed to go out.
The U.S. link with the Hmong goes back to the 1960s, when the
—
(c) 2010, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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