Ready-Made
Human Rights Letters

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—Guy Ottewell and Tilly Lavenás, founder members of the Amnesty International groups of Greenville, South Carolina, and Lyme Regis, England.

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These “remhurls” have been sent by email to a list of friends at irregular intervals (monthly, sometimes less, sometimes more) since 1996. Since 2008 we have used this better method of distribution. We are responsible for them; they are not an official production of Amnesty International, Survival International, or any other of our sources.

You may submit a letter appeal for possible use. Please make it easy for us: Keep it short. Provide a summary of the fuller information (which we like to get in chronological order). Expect to be edited. Provide a web link if possible, or a citation of the authority for the information, e.g. for an Amnesty International Urgent Action, its number, date, and "write no later than" date. Send to guy@universalworkshop.com

Another resource for easily sending human-rights letters

More about Thao Moua and Pa Fue Khang

If you are in Europe, you could send a copy of your letter to Laos's diplomatic mission, which is in Paris:
His Excellency Mr Khouanta Phalivong
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Embassy of the Lao People's Democratic Republic
74, Ave Raymond-Poincaré 75 116
Paris
France

You can send cards, with simple non-political greetings, to Thao Moua or Pa Fue Khang:
c/o Samkhe Prison
Vientiane
Lao People's Democratic Republic

Information from Amnesty International's Individuals at Risk Case-Sheet 2007/08 of November 2007, and Greetings Card Campaign Action 1 Nov. 2007—31 Jan. 2008:
Thao Moua, Pa Fue Khang and Char Yang, men of the ethnic Hmong people in Laos, were arrested in June 2003 with two Bangkok-based journalists—Belgian Thierry Falise and Frenchman Vincent Reynaud—and Pastor Naw Karl Mua, their Hmong-American interpreter. They had just emerged from the jungle in Xieng Khouang province, where the journalists had been researching an article on the ill-treatment of Hmong people. The three men were working as their assistants, drivers and guides.
    Following their arrest the three Hmong men were reportedly shackled in leg irons and beaten with sticks and bicycle chains. In pre-trial detention one of them was repeatedly knocked unconscious. The arrests were only acknowledged by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs weeks later, after worldwide protests.
    On 30 June five of the six were brought to trial, which lasted less than three hours. (Yang, who had managed to escape detention, was tried in absentia; he eventually fled to Thailand and was resettled to a third country.)
The Laotians had no legal representation and the trial's outcome was apparently pre-determined.
    (Quotation from Thierry Falise, the Belgian journalist: "The trial was a farce and when it came to the reading of the conclusions of the sentences... it was a text of five or six pages, which was typewritten; we only had a fifteen minute pause before that so it was obvious that this text was typed up in advance.")
    All six were sentenced to between 10 and 20 years' imprisonment. The embassies of the foreign nationals negotiated their release shortly afterwards; the three were deported on 9 July but their notes and film materials were confiscated. Moua and Khang were transferred to Samkhe prison in Vientiane, the Laotian capital. It is not known if they were allowed to appeal. They are serving sentences of 12 and 15 years respectively.
    The charges against them included collaboration in the commission of an offence, possession of firearms and explosives, possession of drugs, and destruction of evidence.
Amnesty International believes their unfair trial was politically motivated because of their involvement in researching a news story about the plight of the Hmong hiding in the jungle.
    Ethnic Hmong prisoners receive particularly harsh treatment and are at increased risk of torture, denial of medical treatment, and harsh punishments.

The genocide of the Hmong
During the Vietnam war, Laos was supposed to be neutral, but North Vietnamese troops operated there and the US and Royal Laos armies fought against them. The CIA recruited men of the Hmong tribe, who could move quickly through the forests and mountains that they knew well.
    After the US pulled out in 1975, leaving Laos like Vietnam to the communists, the Pathet Lao government announced that it would wipe out all Hmong in Laos. So for the several thousand remaining Hmong the war has never stopped: they have to defend themselves, with the rusting weapons left to them, against continual attack from Laotian troops. They have to live in hiding in the jungle, unable to rest anywhere long enough to grow food, living on rats and boiled shrubs, and suffering severe malnutrition and disease.
    When the occasional foreign journalist reaches them, the Hmong weep unrestrainedly and beg for the Americans to come back and rescue them. A CIA agent who was the leader in their recruitment and training has said: "The CIA owes them nothing. We gave them the choice to leave." Some did become refugees in America. More recently hundreds have fled into Thailand, but Thailand has forcibly returned them. The only solution is for the US to repay its debt to those it used by pressing Laos to cease persecuting them, but the US gives no more than lip-service to this.

From Amnesty International's background material: "Those [Hmong] who have assisted visiting journalists, or have connections to these Hmong groups, are themselves at risk of serious human rights abuses. In Laos, a one-party state that tightly restricts the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly, opposition to the government is not permitted. The state retains control of the media, religious organizations, and trade unions. There are no independent domestic non-government organisations, and international human rights monitors are not permitted free access to the country. Trial proceedings in political cases fail to meet international standards; conditions in police custody and prisons are harsh, with reports of torture and ill-treatment. Although Laos signed the International Covenant on Civil and political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2001, it has to date failed to take sufficient necessary steps towards ratification and full implementation. (For more information see Amnesty International's report, Lao people's democratic Republic: Hiding in the Jungle—Hmong under threat, Amnesty International Index: ASA 26/003/2007)."

The case of Thao Moua and Pa Fue Khang is particularly important: it brought to light the oppression of the Hmong in Laos. Click here for further very interesting information about the Hmong in Laos, written by Duncan Booth.