Hmong youths fear repatriation

BAN KHEK NOI, Thailand — It was the fear of persecution that drove Yang Pahua to flee her native Laos — twice.

Yang, 17, is one of 21 girls and five boys whose stories have drawn new attention to the plight of the Hmong, an ethnic minority. Their families first fled Laos in 2004 for an informal refugee settlement in the Thai province of Phetchabun. The youths were sent back to Laos in December 2005.

In June this year, it emerged that a dozen of them had run away again. They have now made it back to Phetchabun.

The youth share the tragedy of thousands of Hmong who are hiding in the jungles of Laos or living in limbo in Thailand. The Hmong are viewed with suspicion by Laos because they fought in the CIA-backed "secret war" of the 1960s and 1970s against the communists who are now in power. Some, including the youth, also are Christian at a time when the Vientiane government views proselytizing as a challenge to its authority in a mostly Buddhist country.

Yet the Hmong who escape across the border risk a hostile reception in Thailand, which has deported more than 300 of them over the past year. Thai officials have reserved the right to send back all the Laotian Hmong, whom they no longer consider political refugees.

"Now, I am being sought after by both the Lao and Thai governments," Yang said. "I would like to plead for help from humanitarian agencies. ... I can't continue to live like this."

Yang, her mother and her four siblings were among the Hmong who formed an early refugee community at Huay Nam Khao village, about 60 miles south of the Lao border, in 2004. Their numbers grew fast, with the latest survey by the Thai military putting them at 7,700.

Yang first fled to Thailand when her father was killed after his return from a six-month visit to his brother in America, she said. She claims Laotian security forces suspected him of channeling funds from Hmong Americans to anti-government rebels.

Shortly before Christmas 2005, the youths left the camp for choir practice at a nearby church, and unwittingly strayed too far. Thai officials jailed them, then secretly deported them and their teacher back to Laos.

For more than a year afterward, neither Thai nor Lao officials admitted knowledge of their whereabouts. Yang said she and 20 other girls were detained for two months in Paksan, 125 miles east of Vientiane. Then they were transferred to Khammouan province, where they were forced to do farming and housework in harsh conditions.