Lao Human Rights News
North Korea has ordered its farmers to begin planting crops, but many farms in the country have yet to be plowed due to a severe lack of adequate farming machinery, sources told RFA. During January’s Eighth Party Congress, the central government said that, prior to the coronavirus pandemic, North Korea had been too reliant on […]
Laos on Monday saw its biggest jump in cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, since the pandemic began more than a year ago, as the impoverished nation expanded a lockdown and added additional capacity at treatment centers to deal with the drastic rise in infections. Rattanaxay Phetsouvanh, director general of the Communicable […]
Protests in Myanmar against the military coup that removed Aung San Suu Kyi’s government from power have grown in recent days despite official efforts to make organizing them difficult or even illegal. Here’s a look at who is organizing the protests and the obstacles they face: IS PROTESTING ALLOWED? It was a grey area for […]
Myanmar’s military has seized power after detaining Aung San Suu Kyi and other democratically elected leaders. Troops are patrolling streets in major cities and communications are limited. The top army commander is now in charge and a one-year state of emergency has been declared, army TV announced. The move follows a landslide win by Ms […]
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump offered a new rationale Sunday for threatening to veto the annual defense policy bill that covers the military’s budget for equipment and pay raises for service members: China. He did not outline his concerns. Republican and Democratic lawmakers say the wide-ranging defense policy bill, which the Senate sent to the […]
Hundreds of Lao migrant fishermen are stranded in Malaysia after the Lao Embassy in Kuala Lumpur took control of their return travel plans to arrange pricier flights, which had already been complicated by coronavirus restrictions, the fishermen told RFA. Drawn by the prospect of well-paid work at sea, around 700 Lao migrants traveled overland through […]
Vietnam has stepped up arrests and harsh gag orders on activists, independent journalists, bloggers and Facebook commenters who raise concerns or criticism of their government in 2020, rights groups said. One-party Vietnam’s already low tolerance of dissent has deteriorated sharply this year with a steady drumbeat of arrests in the run-up to the ruling Communist […]
Seven Lao Christians evicted from their homes in southern Saravan province in October for refusing to renounce their faith have returned to their village, but are being refused permission to rebuild homes demolished by authorities when they were first thrown out, RFA has learned. The seven, who are members of two families in the Pasing-Kang […]
PHNOM PENH — Former Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan said on Friday that Southeast Asian countries needed to consider revoking ASEAN membership for Cambodia and Laos for allowing an external power to exert influence on them, a thinly-veiled reference to their proximity to China. Bilahari Kausikan was speaking at a webinar organized by Singapore-based ISEAS Yusof […]
Four Lao Christians have been held in jail for over three months in the country’s Khammouane province for planning funeral rites—an exercise of religious freedom deemed by village authorities to have violated Lao customs and “divided community solidarity,” Lao sources say. The four were arrested on July 3 in Khammouane’s Phousath village after traveling there […]