Lao Human Rights News
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 […]
Days of demonstrations in Thailand, where protesters are calling for regime change, have inspired a rare outpouring of frustration with the government by netizens in neighboring Laos, where criticism of the one-party Communist state is strictly forbidden and punishable with hefty prison terms. Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on Thursday ended an emergency decree banning […]
Michael Nguyen, a U.S. citizen of Vietnamese ethnicity jailed in Vietnam since last year on charges of attempting to overthrow the government, has been released from prison and allowed to return to his home in California, family and media sources said on Monday. Nguyen had been serving a 12-year term, but was suddenly sent home […]
The U.S. State Department has approved the potential sale of 100 Boeing-made Harpoon Coastal Defense Systems to Taiwan in a deal that has a potential value of up to $2.37 billion, the Pentagon said Monday. The move comes days after the State Department approved the potential sale of three other weapons systems to Taiwan, including […]
NEW DELHI – India and the United States have signed a landmark agreement to share military information and vowed to ramp up security and strategic ties as top U.S. officials emphasized the need for enhanced cooperation to confront Chinese assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region. ”Our leaders and our citizens see with increasing clarity that the […]