Individual Cases
Two former high-ranking government officials whose imprisonment for expressing dissident political views had been much publicized by international human rights groups were released in October 2004. A third dissident sentenced along with them died in prison in 1998. The three men had been arrested in 1990 for expressing concern about government policies and advocating economic and political reforms.
In October 1999, 30 young people were arrested for attempting to display posters calling for peaceful economic, political and social change in Laos. Five of them were arrested and subsequently sentenced to up to 10 years imprisonment on charges of treason. One has since died due to his treatment by prison guards, while one has been released. The surviving three men should have been released by October 2009, but their whereabouts remains unknown.
In 2004, a Lao Hmong refugee photographed and then smuggled video footage out of Laos of an alleged incident in which Lao government troops raped and murdered four young Hmong girls and one boy, then mutilated their bodies . He denies claims by the Lao government that the video was a fabrication.
Read more about this topic: Human Rights In Laos
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“The trouble with the sacred Individual is that he has no significance, except as he can acquire it from others, from the social whole.”
—Bernard Devoto (1897–1955)
“For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)