LAOS

MEMORANDUM

FOR THE ATTENTIN OF THE MEMBERS OF THE UNITED-NATIONS’ ORGANISATION AND THE INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE FOR DEMOCRACY

NEW YORK, September 2007

CENTER OF STUDIES AND RESEARCHES ON LAOS AND ASIA

Paris,  20th September 2007

Dr. Khamphèo PHIPHAK

THE SITUATION OF LAOS

Throughout the history of Laos, discord, caused by foreign interference and invasion, appeared among the Laotian people several times. Similarly, past reconciliations between the Laotians resulted from pressure on the part of prejudicial foreign powers, who acted according to their own strategic interests always detrimental to those of the Laotian people.

The subordination of Laos’s politic to that of the foreign countries caused internal crisis and external conflicts with some neighboring countries.

As regards the economic point of view, Laos has the privilege to be ranked first of all assisted countries. The truth is that while the Laotian citizenry receive few dollars, most leaders’ account are well fuelled by foreign banks. 

The decline of the Laotian society is such that the value system is closely subordinated of the dollar and the civil and military hierarchy of privileges.

Like the October Soviet Revolution of 1917 and the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960’s, the revolutionary process of Laos during the second half of the year 1975, was accelerated. The Laotian communist party, called the Lao People’s Revolution Party, came out of the shadows of leading the final phase of the power takeover. The power occupation consisted of two phases, which on the one hand an extension and consolidation of the revolutionary forces, whereas, on the other hand, the instauration of the people’s democracy, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.

RECALLING THE FACST

On the 2 December 1975, the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party ( LPRP ) with the massive assistance of the Vietnamese, imposed a communist regime and engrossed an undivided power. The ageing Laos monarchy, in place for more than ten centuries, was brutally abolished and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic proclaimed without the democratic sanction of the Lao People. Moreover, each time a strong and tragic period opened, this change was marked as utopian. Very quickly, however, the historic reality of the events became apparent. The terrorized population was deprived of all rights and liberties. Since, the sufferings of the Laotian people have known neither borders nor respite. In extreme manner, the LPRP raged against those who had been in the service of the former regime.

The people cried from the boundless pain experienced and continued since the cannon passed over the countryside in silence, a huge scandal of peace stupidly wasted. Since the dark day of 2 December 1975, the people cried over the hoisting of the communist flag and change of name, symbols of a defeated Laos. Discretely, as it is done in Laos, the dream of democracy and prosperity arising from finally meeting such a concord was lost. In fact, so much was it true, says Henri Amouroux in an article on the Nazis crimes ( Le Monde on 25 October 2000 ) that “ “ the incuriosity still remains large, curiosity suspect, it is a matter of another evil empire such as that of Stalin, that of Ho Chi Minh, that of Pol Pot where the memoirs of the duty of compulsory crimes of some correspond to the oblivious duty of crimes of others ”.

As early as the first days of the taking over of the communist power, in 1975, police combing was set up throughout the cities. Well-tried, the method of the USSR was used in people’s democracies, such as that of Cuba, where the CDR, the Committee of Defence of the Revolution, was entrusted with looking out for the least fault to the communist morality, the method of self-defence had eyes and ears everywhere. Over the last thirty-two years, such control over the population is always in practice. A police officer can gain the house of anyone at any time and does not fail to do so. The State, the Party, is him. The only means of avoiding all trouble is to stay in a corner and be quiet. Speak out the word “multi-party system”

in public, criticize the Party or express ideas contrary to the Party line and detainment is deserved.

In all universities, as in all enterprise and corporations, the Party members serve as informers of their fellow workers. The informer’s mission consists of spying on their subjects. Certain hotel employees, taxi drivers, and cycle-rickshaw riders are laid out especially to watch the foreign visitors who are marked out accordingly. Good students of the Stasi of East Germany and the Soviet KGB, the Lao security forces have copied their working methods on these two famous organisms.  Mixed with the population, their agents are alive also in the administration. Downright machines of propaganda, that of political teachings, are striving to lead the inhabitants to practice at best different programs of the Party.

In reality, all press is the reflection of the unique thinking and the printing office of the state monopoly.

Today, one says, “ Where are the promises of the communist leaders? ” All the Laotians know the answer : their country is under the heel of the mandarin regime, depraved and worn away by corruption. In the name of the revolution, that is to say, the hope of a better and worthy life, they impose on the population a miserable life

After the colonialists, the feudalists, the imperialists, the puppets, there was hence the maneuvers of the peaceful evolution of the west and of the Laotian reactionary groups abroad. The peaceful evolution was propagandized as the worst enemy which threatened the regime’s existence by the Party.

The strategy of the Vietnamese Communist Party in Laos consisted of favoring the  participation of the Nèo Lao Hakxat ( NLHX ) to a Royal Government of National Union, born from the Vientiane Agreements of 1973, in order to restore peace and national concord, as a key stage emerging on the abolition of the constitutional monarchy, on the power-taking of the Lao People’s Revolution Party ( LPRP ) and on the founding of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic ( LPDR ).

The Lao People’s Revolutionary Party rules as absolute master. A dark day in the history of Laos, the ideology of Marxist-Leninism is the base of the regime led by the LPRP, which brutally surged from the underground activity. But, nobody had

suspected that the LPRP, clandestine up until that time, was going to surface in view to impose and seize power. The King, the Queen, the Crown Prince as well as the military cadres, the policemen and the administrative officials were arrested and deported to the concentration camps. Urged and fostered by the Vietnamese communists, the LPRP destroyed the foundation of the country, and henceforth Laos became the province of Vietnam.

In the Geneva Accords of 1954 and 1962, in the Paris’ Accords of 1973 (Article 20) and the Vientiane’s agreements, it was prohibited to introduce, in Laos, troops and military persons, arms and munitions, military materials. It is urgent that Vietnam respects the fundamental nation rights of the Laotian people, abstains from intervention in the internal affairs of Laos and recognizes Laos as a fully sovereign and independent state, such as it has been demanded and specified by the Accords. The Accords and agreements have not been respected by Vietnam. The Vietnamese communists are only and entirely responsible for a situation which stirs up disgrace in Laos. All the democratic liberties have been suppressed. The pagodas and the sanctuaries, formerly and protected, have been transformed and revenges uttered. The entire country lives in great distress and fear. The regime provoked the most unprecedented exodus in the history of the country; more than one tenth of the population, about 420,000 people must have left the native land in order to find a safe place in democratic and free countries.

Why this massive flight? For, it is well a matter of flight-distracted flight, desperate flight, flight of fear, flight of past all hope. What are the causes of this? The truth must be said. The opinion is proper as to be informed in complete manner on this disturbing problem of great human tragedy, which shakes the conscience of the civilized world, and at the same time, represents a powerful detonator enabled to lead to a new extension of conflict.

It is this rage of persecution and the arms rattling that thousands of peoples, being obedient to the reflex of survival, have decided with tears and weeping an fury in heart to flee the inhumane regime, which secretes only the hatred, the persecution, and the death.

We, the Lao, flee our country because:

-    the new regime has show its monster face of demented cruelty;
-    there exists elsewhere democracy and liberty;
-    we die in the concentration camps;
-    we fear – fear of reprisals, fear of secret police raids.

Thirty-two years after, to this day, any democratization process is not yet perceptible: the Laotian citizen does not always have the right to free expression. At last, the communist party has plunged the Laotian people into extreme poverty with all the social, unavoidable consequences: drugs, prostitution, and HIV.

Adopted on 15 August 1991, the Constitution has maintained the Party as the leading cell of the political system and has determined the new role of the Party; it refers to a Democratic Centralism and justifies the dictatorship of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party ( LPRP ) in the name of the multi-ethnic people; the role of the militants is reinforced; it is also the first Constitution written sixteen years after the communist took power in 1975. The preamble recognizes the leadership of the Indochinese Communist Party ( ICP ) then, the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party ( LPRP ) during sixty years of struggle. The regime of the single party remains the dominant political force; the government, the army and the bureaucracy are subordinated to it and the main political orientations of the government are set by its Political Bureau and its Central Committee.

Before, 1975, the power was constitutionally represented by a Buddhist monarchy; after 1975, the power doesn’t pass anymore through Buddhism, but rather through Marxist ideology. The marxisation of the Laotian society, its submission to a totalitarian ideology, like that of the USSR, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba correspond to a profound and generalized calling into question the values, the beliefs and the traditional references.

The regime changes didn’t have the support of the population because it was dictated by Vietnam. The revolution that occurred in Laos was the work of the Vietnamese communist who took refuge behind the leaders of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party; hence, Laos became a part of the Vietnamese sphere of influence. The radical change mechanism in the destiny of Laos, namely the Neo Lao Hak Xat ( NLHX ) and Lao People’s Revolutionary Party ( LPRP ) that became “ the Trojan Horse,” permitted the Vietnamese to colonize Laos. 

THE FRIENDSHIP TREATY

(THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIPS)

On 17 July 1977, Laos signed a Friendship Treaty with Vietnam as well as a special cooperation, valid for 25 years and renewable. This treaty legalized the stationing of more than 100,000 Vietnamese soldiers already present in Laos, to guarantee the trusteeship of Hanoi on Vientiane and undoubtedly insured the seizure of the country; this treaty also allows Vietnam to exploit the forest and the mines in Laos.

The special relationships between the two countries are at first guaranteed by the presence of the Vietnamese troops’ occupation in Laos, and an extent of integration of the general staff and of the armies which ensure a total control of the security forces by the High Commandment of Hanoi. It is founded also the old ties of Party to Party and the personal loyalty of the leaders. There existed, originally, only one Indochinese Communist Party in the past thirty years of struggle in the forest. The Indochinese Communist Party was led by the Vietnamese.

In 1951, Ho Chi Minh decided to split into three sections, namely, Vietnamese Communist Party, Laotian Communist Party, and Cambodian Communist Party, however, the coordination remains closely in the hand of Hanoi. This diagram was inspired, during that period, by a hegemony willingness of the Vietnamese, as it will be the case later, by the new model offered then, by the USSR and by the Republics’ Federation of Russia.

The block cohesion, Laos-Vietnam, goes forward through strong imbrications of diverse partisanship instances: the Political Bureaus have a full meting at least once a year; and , for the principal levels of the hierarchy, the responsible persons have frequent meetings or a general session and keep up a close collaboration.

The privileged relationships extend, of course, to state sphere, in all domains and to all echelons. The two countries are henceforth tied by the treaties of friendship and special cooperation, which cover the whole military and strategic, economic and political aspects of the problems. In the framework of Special Relationships, Laos

confirms its anchorage to Vietnam. The Laotian army has been trained and framed by the Vietnamese. The presence of Vietnamese officers at all echelons of commandment, the control on the units and the security services are furthermore reinforced because of the state of war. The military and civil Laotian cadres are compelled periodically to attend the political seminars which took place more often in Hanoi or Hochiminhville.

The Vietnamese of today are assimilated in Laos and integrated in the Laotian administration. In the long run, with the waves of colonists settled in Laos, this country will run the risk of losing its culture, its language and even its identity. Never will a government worthy of its name accept to link the fate of its people to that of its hereditary enemy. These Special Relationships of 25 years and renewable were time designated by the Vietnamese communists to proceed to another race of victimized Laotians. Twenty-five years was the time needed for the Vietnamese to carry out the definitive and complete integration of this kind of Laotians in the homogenous whole of the Great Vietnam.

With the occupation troops have come thousands of advisers, all kinds of experts who have filled all the Laotian Ministries converted into relay-stations carrying out the orders of Hanoi. Besides, hundreds of thousands of “ colonists ” including whole families are invading the country, engaged in a systematic pillage. The Lao People’s Democratic Republic is the diametrically opposite of the qualifying it has indulged in. Only elementary liberty exists in Laos at present.

Communism is a generator of bureaucracy which has directed the Laotian leaders to a catastrophic error in the management of the country. In  Laos, the communist revolution has not yielded the expected results. The economic and social situation has reached its lowest level with the multiplying of poor people. During several decades, Laos has been living in the utopia. The people have become impoverished, but at the same time, the members of the Nomenklatura ( social groups with exceptional prerogatives ) have accumulated fortunes. Laos is under perfusion and has survived thanks to the international aid.

As time elapses, the regime appears neatly usurping and illegal. It has monopolized the power due to the support of Vietnamese armed forces and practices it arbitrarily under their protection. Any people's referendum has not proceeded. The communication of Laos was dictated by the strategy of the Vietnamese Communist

Party aiming at creating an Indochinese Federation, which would be under its control. In effect, if the Neo Lao Issara served as cover of the Viet-Minh in Laos, the Neo Lao Hak Xat served as cover to the Front of Vietnam Fatherland. It is in the same way for the Lao People's Revolutionary Party ( LPRP ), which served also as cover for the Vietnamese Communist Party ( VCP ). The accelerated communization of Laos was essentially imposed by the doctrinal orthodoxy, for one must not neglect the fact that the Laotian communists were very loyal to the Leninist tactic of the power takeover.

The establishment of the Lao People's Democratic Republic is the fruit of thirty years of struggle and the policies of the Indochinese Communist Party ( ICP ) then and of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party in concert with the Vietnamese people. This constitutes a grave historic turning point of the dramatic history of Laos and the Laotian people. The LPRP is quite well the agent of a plan conceived and led by Hanoi. The Vietnamese plan is to transform Laos in an annex of Vietnam.

Subjected to foreign occupation and with a regime of unrelenting persecution, which suffocated its own country by a lack of liberty, the Laotian people are forgotten, forsaken, and, at last ending, without dignity and national identity. Faced with this reality, the Laotian people demand:

1.  The withdrawal of the Vietnamese occupation forces from the national territory.
2.  The cessation of all interference in the internal affairs of Laos.
3.  The respect of independence and territorial integrity of Laos.
4.  The ending of the dictatorial regime in view of realizing the reconciliation and the national concord.
5.  The establishment of the political regime in common accord with the majority opinion of the Lao citizens.
6.  The scrupulous respect of the fundamental liberties and human rights.

The Laotian people wish only to live in peace and on good terms with their neighboring countries, having no other ambition than to live all the ideological obedience and foreign interference.

THE PERSPECTIVES

The definition that one can give to the present Laotian political system, is a monopoly of power in the hands of a single Party ( Lao People's Revolutionary Party ) unable to modernize the country.

Laos, has been in this situation since 1975 and can only find its safety when it turns toward new horizons by endowing itself with the real basis of a regime, truly democratic notably by the creation of a State of Law provided with a National Constitution in order to establish the structures favorable to the management of the affairs of the country and the society.

The new reasons of hoping exist if the power combines the economic reforms with the political reforms. In this viewpoint, the project of society must be based on the democratic foundations because democracy promotes the initiation and guarantee of liberty. On the economic point of view, Laos can draw the advantage of all geopolitical possibilities as well as the natural resources of the country. This availability of means asset can stop the deterioration of the level of living and raise the purchasing power of each citizen. The project of the new society will initiate an economic growth process and a sustained development, in view of restoring a social justice by the redistribution of wealth. The political power must have a clear and exact vision of the future without which the development project cannot succeed, for, this should respond to the need of the population not only immediately but also for the next decades.

The new society will have as a major objective promotion of democracy, well-being, happiness, and culture of all Laotians. The Laotian people aspire to have a truly just society, founded in democracy and on the defence of national independence and sovereignty,

A new project of society consists of guaranteeing the future of all citizens; it constitutes a mission for the public power which has the duty to respecting the Laotian values as well as the democratic values: liberty, rights, duties and responsibilities.

It is very important to make known that the Laotians are waiting much more on the regime change. This will be the only reform that could meet the need of the country. Thus, be in pursuit of the following aims:

                  - Independence
                  - Sovereignty
                  - Democracy
                  - National Unity
                  - Liberty
                  - Human rights
                  - Cohesion and social justice
                  - Territorial integrity
                  - The practice of the peaceful coexistence principles and good neighborliness.

Since democracy is the only way which might, at present, pull Laos from this situation in which it dwells, such reform could be realized only the by the means of political willingness and national reconciliation.

The United States, Europe, Asia and the countries which cherish peace must stimulate the leaders of the Laotian communists to work out and put in its place the new structure. But, it is proper to underline that if Laos wants to give a good picture on the international scene, it must first of all examine the question of social peace, for, without social peace, the economy cannot operate. This peace could only come about on the part of the leaders who must accept the method of democratization chosen.

CONCLUSION

The independence represents the supreme value of national identity, it constitutes the fundamental foundation of the nation, and it is the pride and the reflected light of the aspiration of the whole Laotian people who have always devoted the immense sacrifices for Laos's defence. Since the abolition of the constitutional monarchy, the Laos' independence which was the subject of a diplomatic recognition of the international authorities and the different countries throughout the world, have been affected on more grounds than one. Thus, the restoration of the national independence becomes a necessity.

Laos is in breakdown and the voice of Laos in the world is weakening. Now, the Laotian people need change to build the country or a just national order founded on the rights of the people to achieve democracy, prosperity, and solidarity.

The life and the survival of Laos are founded on the political relationships with its neighbors and on the balance of forces prevalent in the region. Laos must consequently possess the capacity to manage at the same time the regional and international juncture in taking into account the internal and external constraints in order to safeguard peace, security, and national unity.

The future of Laos must depend essentially on democracy which needs a policy of national concord, cooperation and solidarity based on a spirit, sine qua non condition of independence, sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity, and human rights because the future of the country implies a realistic polity. It is a national urgency.