January 2003 - The Secret War in Laos Continues.
Philip Blenkinsop
Agence VU
For fifteen years until 1975, Hmong guerrillas were the brave and loyal allies of the United States, providing essential combat, reconnaissance and recovery support for the CIA’s secret war against the Vietnamese and Pathet Lao in Laos.
In April 1975, the US withdrew its troops from Indochina and in the following month the CIA evacuated about 2,500 Hmong officers and their families from their secret base at Long Cheng in Laos to Thailand. Many of those Hmong guerrillas and their families left behind attempted to walk to the Mekong River and cross into Thailand. Thousands of them were killed by Pathet Lao and Vietnamese troops as they tried to flee.
Two and a half decades later, those who were unable to escape continue to suffer genocide and persecution at the hands of the Lao Army because of their allegiance to the US.
Preview
In the heart of the Moung Xaysomboune Special (military) Zone in the mountains of Northern Laos, a group of CIA secret war veterans and their families continue to fight for their lives to this day. Desperately low on food and ammunition, their tactics are simple and dictated by their predicament… Defend and run… but their plight is becoming increasingly desperate by the day as Lao ground troops, determined to carry out their mission of genocide, tighten the noose around them. “This time” says Hmong Commander, Moua Toua Ther, “when the helicopters come, we will not be able to run or hide. We will be butchered like wild animals.”
I fear that many of these people, men, women and children, whose faces appear in this exhibition, will, even as you regard their likenesses, be already dead or dying in the mountains of Laos.
