Working Group on Indigenous Peoples Considers Plight of Hmong Lao

Representatives of the Lao Human Rights Council and UN Representative Society for Threatened Peoples last week presented testimony on the plight of the Hmong people in Laos, focusing on refugees who recently fled to Thailand. Part of the Working Group on Indigenous Peoples (WGIP) conference, the panel “focused on the ongoing genocide against the Hmong people in Laos,” according to the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organizations. Human rights advocate Rebecca Sommer presented a documentary titled “Hunted Like Animals” showing the history of the Hmong – from the Vietnam War when U.S. troops recruited and trained the Hmong to the war’s aftermath, when “the Hmong have been constantly persecuted by Laotian and Vietnamese soldiers as reprisals for their help to the Americans,” according to the report. According to Sommer, “‘Today, it’s not simply revenge – the Hmong-in-hiding are used for Vietnamese and Laotian military training purposes.”
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