Word: thailand
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Thailand's military packed more than 4,000 Hmong asylum seekers into trucks and drove them from refugee camps to neighboring Laos, a single-party state that's been accused of persecuting the Hmong since they backed U.S. forces during the Vietnam War. Thailand maintains that Hmong living illegally in Thailand are economic migrants, not political refugees in need of international protection - but the decision to forcibly repatriate them drew international condemnation. Human Rights Watch called the expulsion "appalling," while the U.S. State Department argued that the refugees deserved to be protected from threats they faced in their homeland...
After Saigon fell, America abandoned the secret army, and in 1975, as many as 10,000 Hmong were slaughtered at the hands of the ascendant Pathet Lao, according to Roger Warner, an author who is researching a book on Vang Pao. Others fled to neighboring Thailand and the U.S., where about 100,000 were eventually resettled. It was not until 1997 that Washington officially acknowledged the valor of the Hmong soldiers. A small stone with a copper plaque was placed in their honor between the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame in Arlington National...
...plaque has done little to resolve the Hmong's plight in Southeast Asia. Thousands live in poverty in Thailand, and a few armed bands still live in the Laotian highlands, refusing to surrender to the government of Laos. Earlier this month, there were signs that the conflict might be easing: Vang Pao, now 80 and living in California, said he wanted to return home and help reconcile the Hmong and the Communist government in Vientiane. But officials reportedly replied that they'd welcome him back by executing him. It's no wonder Thailand's Hmong refugees are worried that...
...have spent two weeks in Thailand reporting on a tsunami that has transformed its famous beach resorts into corpse-strewn ruins. One night, exhausted, my clothes reeking of death, I try calling a colleague in the hard-hit Indonesian province of Aceh. I simply misdial, but the recorded message gives me chills: "The destination you have dialed...
...triggered by a 9.15-magnitude earthquake off the Indonesian coast on Dec. 26, 2004. It was a truly international catastrophe: the tsunami struck 13 countries, killing 226,000 people of 40 nationalities. Five years later, a first-time visitor to the worst-affected countries - Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand - might find the wave's terrible path hard to detect, thanks to a multinational, multi-billion-dollar reconstruction effort. Across Aceh, thousands of houses were built with foreign aid in what were once wastelands. In Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, new homes surround a 2,600-ton ship pushed...