US urges Laos to address concerns on mega dam

 

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The US urged caution on plans by Laos to build a multibillion-dollar dam that has raised environmental concerns from neighboring nations, saying its impact was still “unknown.”
The $3.8bn hydroelectric project at Xayaburi, led by Thai group CH Karnchang, has sharply divided the four Mekong nations—Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand—who rely on the river system for fish and irrigation.

“Our own experience has made us acutely aware of the economic, social and environmental impacts that large infrastructure can have over the long-term,” the State Department said in a statement that nonetheless recognised the “important role” dams can play in helping advance economic growth.

“The extent and severity of impacts from the Xayaburi dam on an ecosystem that provides food security and livelihoods for millions are still unknown.”

Laotian deputy energy minister Viraphonh Viravong earlier said that the government would hold a groundbreaking ceremony today and begin work on the dam later this week.

Building work on the main project has been stalled for about 18 months over concerns relating to its environmental impact.

Viraphonh said some aspects of the dam’s design had been changed to “reassure neighbouring countries”, but he insisted that objections would not derail plans to finish the project by the end of 2019.
“We are concerned that construction is proceeding before impact studies have been completed,” the State Department said. It urged stakeholders to voice their concerns through the Mekong River Commission, whose Mekong nation members have not reached consensus on whether the project should proceed.

The mooted 1,260 megawatt dam, the first of 11 on the key waterway, has become a symbol of the potential risks of hydropower projects in the region.

Laos, one of the world’s most under-developed nations, believes the dam will help it become “the battery of Southeast Asia” by selling electricity to its richer neighbours.

“We have a strong interest in the sustainable management of the Mekong River, and we view our robust engagement as a sign of our strong commitment toward a lasting and positive relationship with the region,” the US statement said.

“We hope that the government of Laos will uphold its pledge to work with its neighbours in addressing remaining questions regarding Xayaburi. We encourage the MRC countries to continue to work together to realise their shared vision of an economically prosperous, socially just and environmentally sound Mekong River basin.” AFP

In historic visit, Clinton reaches out to Laos

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BRADLEY KLAPPER, Associated Press

Updated 01:29 a.m., Wednesday, July 11, 2012

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, is greeted by Laotian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Thongloun Sisoulith before a meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vientiane, Laos Wednesday, July 11, 2012. Clinton is making a historic visit to Laos, the first by a U.S. secretary of state in more than five decades. Photo: Brendan Smialowski, Pool / AP

VIENTIANE, Laos (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton became the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Laos in more than five decades, gauging whether a place the United States pummeled with bombs during the Vietnam War could evolve into a new foothold of American influence in Asia.

Clinton met with the communist government’s prime minister and foreign minister in the capital of Vientiane on Wednesday, part of a weeklong diplomatic tour of Southeast Asia. The goal is to bolster America’s standing in some of the fastest growing markets of the world, and counter China’s expanding economic, diplomatic and military dominance of the region.

Thirty-seven years since the end of America’s long war in Indochina, Laos is the latest test case of the Obama administration’s efforts to “pivot” U.S. foreign policy away from the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It follows a long period of estrangement between Washington and a once hostile Cold War-era foe, and comes as U.S. relations warm with countries such as Myanmar and Vietnam.

In her meetings, Clinton discussed environmental concerns over a proposed dam on the Mekong River, investment opportunities and joint efforts to clean up the tens of millions of unexploded bombs the U.S. dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War. Greater American support programs in these fields will be included in a multimillion-dollar initiative for Southeast Asia to be announced later this week.

After the meetings, she said they “traced the arc of our relationship from addressing the tragic legacies of the past to finding a way to being partners of the future.”

Clinton also visited a Buddhist temple and a U.S.-funded prosthetic center for victims of American munitions.

At the prosthetic center, she met a man named Phongsavath Souliyalat, who told her how he had lost both his hands and his eyesight from a cluster bomb on his 16th birthday.

“We have to do more,” Clinton told him. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to come here today, so that we can tell more people about the work that we should be doing together.”

The last U.S. secretary of state to visit Laos was John Foster Dulles in 1955. His plane landed after being forced to circle overhead while a water buffalo was cleared from the tarmac.

At that time, the mountainous, sparsely populated nation was at the center of U.S. foreign policy. On leaving office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned his successor, John F. Kennedy, that if Laos fell to the communists, all Southeast Asia could be lost as well.

While Vietnam ended up the focal point of America’s “domino theory” foreign policy, Laos was drawn deeply into the conflict as the U.S. funded its anti-communist forces and bombed North Vietnamese supply lines and bases.

The U.S. dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on the impoverished country during its “secret war” between 1964 and 1973 — about a ton of ordnance for each Laotian man, woman and child. That exceeded the amount dropped on Germany and Japan together in World War II, making Laos the most heavily bombed nation per person in history.

Four decades later, American weapons are still claiming lives. When the war ended, about a third of some 270 million cluster bombs dropped on Laos had failed to detonate, leaving the country awash in unexploded munitions. More than 20,000 people have been killed by ordnance in postwar Laos, according to its government, and contamination throughout the country is a major barrier to agricultural development.

Cleanup has been excruciatingly slow. The Washington-based Legacies of War says only 1 percent of contaminated lands have been cleared and has called on Washington to provide far greater assistance. The State Department has provided $47 million since 1997, though a larger effort could make Laos “bomb-free in our lifetimes,” California Rep. Mike Honda argued.

“Let us mend the wounds of the past together so that Laos can begin a new legacy of peace,” said Honda, who is Japanese-American.

The U.S. is spending $9 million this year on cleanup operations for unexploded ordnance in Laos, but is likely to offer more in the coming days.

It is part of a larger Obama administration effort to reorient the direction of U.S. diplomacy and commercial policy as the world’s most populous continent becomes the center of the global economy over the next century. It is also a reaction to China’s expanding influence.

Despite America’s difficult history in the region, nations in Beijing’s backyard are welcoming the greater engagement — and the promise of billions of dollars more in American investment. The change has been sudden, with some longtime U.S. foes now seeking a relationship that could serve at least as a counterweight to China’s regional hegemony.

Myanmar, also known as Burma, has made significant strides toward reform and democracy after decades as an international pariah, when it was universally scorned for its atrocious labor rights record and its long repression of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi‘s pro-democracy movement. The Obama administration is expected to ease investment restrictions in the country this week.

Vietnam, threatened by Beijing’s claims to the resource-rich South China Sea, has dramatically deepened diplomatic and commercial ties with the United States, with their two-country trade now exceeding $22 billion a year — from nothing two decades ago. Clinton on Tuesday made her third trip to the fast-growing country, meeting with senior communist officials to prod them into greater respect for free expression and labor rights.

Landlocked and impoverished Laos offers fewer resources than its far larger neighbors and has lagged in Asia’s economic boom. It remains one of the poorest countries in Asia, even as it hopes to kick-start its development with accession soon to the World Trade Organization.

In recent years, China has stepped up as Laos’ principal source of assistance, with loans and grants of up to $350 million over the last two decades. But like many others in its region, Laos’ government is wary of Beijing’s intentions. And it has kept an envious eye on neighboring Vietnam’s 40 percent surge in commercial trade with the United States over the last two years, as well as the sudden rapprochement between the U.S. and nearby Myanmar.

Persistent human rights issues stand in the way of closer relations with Washington. The U.S. remains concerned about the plight of the ethnic Hmong minority, most of whom fled the country after fighting for a U.S.-backed guerilla army during the Vietnam War. Nearly 250,000 resettled in the United States. The U.S. has pressed Laos to respect the rights of returnees from neighboring countries.

Washington also has been seeking greater cooperation from Laos on the search for U.S. soldiers missing in action since the Vietnam War. More than 300 Americans remain unaccounted for in Laos.

And it is pressing the government to hold off on a proposed $3.5 billion dam project across the Mekong River. The dam would be the first across the river’s mainstream and has sparked a barrage of opposition from neighboring countries and environmental groups, which warn that tens of millions of livelihoods could be at stake.

The project is currently on hold and Washington hopes to stall it further with the promise of funds for new environmental studies.

What will happen to China as Burma (Myanmar) gets closer with Vietnam, US?

Global News Blog

A senior Chinese military official said Monday that China cherishes friendly relations with Burma, though it appears to be in the midst of a major change now.

By Peter Ford, Staff writer / November 29, 2011

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Beijing

For decades, each time a new Burmese military chief of staff was appointed, like clockwork, he would make his first foreign trip to Beijing, his nation’s firmest diplomatic ally and longtime economic bulwark.

But Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, currently on a visit here, was busy in some unusual places before he came to China. Earlier this month he was talking to the special US envoy to Burma, Derek Mitchell. Then he went to Vietnam. He will be back home later this week when Hillary Clinton makes the first visit to Burma by a US Secretary of State since 1955.

The fact that General Hlaing chose Vietnam, a near neighbor building closer military ties with Washington and making no secret of its nervousness about China’s regional ambitions, has not gone unnoticed in Beijing.

RECOMMENDED: How much do you know about China? Take our quiz.

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping welcomed Hlaing to Beijing with a reminder that the two countries’ friendship had “endured the test of time through sudden international changes.”

Burma appears in the midst of such a change now, as the new nominally civilian government that took over the reins from the military last March releases political prisoners, reaches out to ethnic minorities to end years of violence, and tests a political opening in talks with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

China has been a lifeline for Burma, ruled by military dictatorships since 1962 and especially isolated since most nations slapped sanctions on the government after it cracked down brutally on a pro-democracy uprising in 1988.

Now “we want to have a regular relationship” with the United States, the powerful speaker of the Burmese parliament and former member of the military junta Shwe Mann told reporters on Friday.

The government’s foreign policy would be based on “peaceful coexistence with all nations,” Mr. Mann said, insisting that “there is no reason to have worse relations between Myanmar and China when Myanmar and US relations get better.” Myanmar is the government’s official name for Burma.

Such a policy would mark a return to Burma’s traditional neutrality, an understandable approach given the country’s sensitive geographical location, squeezed between Asia’s two giants, India and China, and flanked by Thailand, a strong US ally.

Since international sanctions isolated the country, Burmese governments have had little option but to depend on China for trade, weaponry, and diplomatic support in the United Nations. Chinese businesses, private and state owned, have poured $12.3 billion into Burma, and hundreds of thousands of Chinese have settled in Burma.

There had been signs even before the military stood down that nationalist generals were unhappy with this state of affairs. Now the new government, dominated by former senior military men who have swapped their uniforms for suits, has stepped away from China in symbolic ways.

Most notable was the decision last September to suspend a $3.6 billion Chinese dam construction project in northern Burma that had sparked considerable local opposition. Of the hydropower due to be generated by the Myitsone dam, 90 percent was to be sent to China.

Though the new Burmese authorities appear keen to re-orient the country’s foreign policy, few observers expect them to cast off ties with their powerful and influential leader. Rather, they will walk a tightrope between Washington and Beijing.

“It would be insane to think that Burma needs to choose one over the other,” prominent Burmese historian Thant Myint-U recently told The Irawaddy, an independent online newspaper published by Burmese exiles. “Burma is the last country that can afford to have bad relations with either the US or China.”

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Related stories

• China issues rare rebuke after Burma border clashes
• The Monitor’s View: A new US-China dance over Burma after release of Aung San Suu Kyi
• Burma (Myanmar) border conflict threatens to complicate ties with China

US bolsters UXO clearance in Xieng Khuang, Khammuan

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The Mines Advisory Group (MAG) Laos and the United States Department of State’s Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement are continuing their history of successful partnership in Xieng Khuang and Khammuan provinces with a new 12 month unexploded ordnance (UXO) clearance project worth US$1.4 million.

Mr Phoukhieo Chanthasomboun ( left ) and Mr David Horrocks shake hands after signing the MOU.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the National Regulatory Authority (NRA) and MAG Laos was signed yesterday in Vientiane.

NRA Director Mr Phoukhieo Chanthasomboun and MAG Country Director Mr David Horrocks jointly signed the document witnessed by US Ambassador to Laos Ms Karen Stewart and officials from the two provinces and MAG.

The project will be carried out in Phaxay, Khoun, Thathom and Nonghaet districts of Xieng Khuang province, as well as Ghommalath, Mahaxay and Bualapha districts of Khammuan province, focusing on conducting a survey for prioritisation of UXO clearance to support socio-economic development activities.

The project has built upon the success of previous projects funded by the Department of State’s Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement. Partnerships with numerous development organisations will enable MAG Laos to ensure that these clearance outputs become development outcomes.

MAG is a British non-government organisation which started operations in Laos in 1994. MAG operations in Laos are highly recognised by the Lao government.

“Since the beginning of its operations in the country, MAG Laos has been working hard to liaise with donors for funding to support its UXO clearance activities which benefit local communities, reduce injuries and deaths from dangerous UXO. In the same way UXO clearance enables local communities to access more safe land,” said Mr Phoukieo at the signing ceremony.

Since 1996, funding from the US government to support UXO clearance in Laos has reached US$30 million.

Mr Phoukhieo, represen-ting the NRA and the Lao government, expressed gratitude and thanks to the US government for its support of socio-economic development in Laos.

In his remarks at the ceremony, Mr Horrocks said extensive UXO spread across a wide swathe of the country not only poses a risk to people carrying out normal activities such as farming, but also prevents or delays development activities and indeed adds to their cost.

Through the work of five UXO clearance teams, significant amounts of contaminated land will be cleared of UXO, he said, adding that, ultimately, the project will contribute to the Lao government’s poverty eradication strategy and Millennium Development Goal No. 9.

Ms Stewart expressed her hope that the MOU would help to ensure the continuation of vital clearance work and activities that will allow Lao children to attend school in a safe environment, return land to communities for agriculture and other economic development, and allow construction of infrastructure such as better road access to healthcare facilities.

By Times Reporters
(Latest Update October 28, 2011)

Help or hell?

In a report released last week, Human Rights Watch accuses a Vientiane drug rehabilitation centre supported by the US embassy and UN agencies of abuses and arbitrary detention. And advocates say it’s a model that is gaining popularity throughout the region

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• Published: 16/10/2011 at 12:00 AM
• Newspaper section: Spectrum

An April, 2009, report by a UN-affiliated news agency portrays the Somsanga Treatment and Rehabilitation Centre in Vientiane as a refuge for methamphetamine addicts _ a place outside Laos’ harsh penal system where they could get clean and learn skills to build new lives. Sports, films and a gym were available at the facility, said the report by the UN’s Integrated Regional Information Networks. “Vocational training not only entertains patients,” it said, “but provides them with confidence and skills for their return to the outside world.” The report was optimistic about the potential of taking the “Somsanga approach” nationwide.

ROUNDED UP: A guard lectures detainees at the Somsanga Treatment and Rehabilitation Centre. A report released by Human Rights Watch last week says that the bleak conditions at the centre keep detainees from benefiting from vocational programmes.PHOTO: ARANTXA CEDILLO

Last week, a damning report released by the US-based group Human Rights Watch (HRW) challenged that image of Somsanga. Based on interviews with 12 people formerly held at the facility, the report paints a picture of a primitive compound surrounded by barbed wire where people are crammed into locked cells, subjected to physical abuse and held without due process for months or even years.

Those interviewed for the report said that the worth of the vocational training offered at the centre was negated by the bleak conditions and forced confinement.

The report also alleges that the facility, rather than rehabilitating drug addicts is serving a dumping ground for those the Lao government deems undesirable such as street children, the homeless, and the mentally ill.

See also: How will addicts fare in Thailand’s “gentler” drug War?

HRW and other human rights monitoring bodies say that the conditions at Somsanga and the manner in which its place outside the court system is exploited by authorities are commonplace at facilities throughout the region.

‘BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE US AND UN’

BARRING ADDICTION: A detainee at the Somsanga centre. The essence of Somsanga’s purported ‘treatment’ remains being locked up, at risk of physical abuse for infringing rules or trying to escape, says Human Rights Watch.

Since 2002, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has been central to Somsanga’s growth via funding provided by the US embassy in Vientiane. The US State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) has provided that funding. The UNODC has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the construction and renovation of buildings at the centre over the past 10 years. The first buildings at Somsanga were constructed in 1996 when it was under the authority of Laos’ Ministry of Public Security. Initial UNODC support involved the construction from 2001 to 2003 of a health clinic beside the main site. During this time, the centre fell under the Ministry of Public Health, with oversight from the Lao Commission on Drug Control. Further capacity building, training and construction projects have continued over the years.

From 2008 to mid-2011, UNODC implemented another project for providing a “suitable basic setting for drug detoxification and rehabilitation and to implement vocational training activities”, according to the HRW report. The project was funded to the tune of US$242,837 from the INL.

Technical support has also been provided by the DED (German Development Service), the Singapore International Foundation, and a handful of other organisations and embassies in Vientiane. Other agencies implicated in the report as helping to fund Somsanga and similar centres in Laos include the Australian, German, Japanese and Singaporean embassies in Vientiane; all have denied any awareness of reports of human rights abuses in the centre.

“International donors are subsidising the illegal detention of people the Lao government finds undesirable and wants locked away,” Joe Amon, director of health and human rights at HRW said.

PULLED INTO ‘PURGATORY’

The Somsanga Rehabilitation Centre is located on the outskirts of Vientiane and comprises a large complex of concrete buildings inside a barbed wire perimeter fence guarded by police.

The “upper buildings” _ those nearest the gate from which the compound slopes gently downhill _ house the clinic and dormitories offering reasonable conditions for those who can pay for them, according to the report. Further in are the “lower buildings” where the bulk of the detainees are kept in overcrowded cells behind high barbed wire-topped walls.

Detainees arrive at Somsanga either after having been picked up by police or village militia groups or sent there by their families, the HRW report says.

A stated government objective of a “drug free” Laos by 2015 means intense pressure at the village level on families of those even suspected of having a drug problem to request that village officials send them to Somsanga.

According to the Lao Commission on Drug Control, the population at Somsanga has fluctuated between 1,100 and 1,600 detainees per year between 2003 and 2009.

The rules at the centre are strict and detainees elected “room captains” act as brutal guards with the complicity of police and facility staff to keep others in line. The detainees interviewed by HRW said the room captains would regularly beat other inmates on the instruction of officials, particularly when an escape was attempted. Of the 12 interviewed, five had witnessed suicide attempts during their stays at the centre _ one detainee recounts watching another kill himself by ingesting glass in the report.

The inmates interviewed by HRW alleged that while officials left the beatings to room guards, they did punish detainees in other ways. “Paet”, released in early 2010, recounted a punishment he received after he was involved in a fight.

“They sent us to the septic tank. We had to take the sh** to the main rubbish dump. Then we had to clean the sh** out of the septic tank with water.

“It was disgusting. Some were vomiting and others were dizzy. We had to stand in the sh**. There were worms in it.”

“Tunva”, who was released in 2010 after four months at the centre, recalled an inmate who tried to escape being tied to a pole of a volleyball net. “They seized him at 1pm and they didn’t let him go until 5 or 6pm. It was hot and he was suffering,” he told HRW. “The foreigners [who visit Somsanga] didn’t see this: they don’t let the foreigners see things like this.”

Mr Amon said UN agencies have called for the closure of facilities with conditions similar to those described in the report about Somsanga. “But the UNODC country office in Laos works in exactly the opposite direction. Despite receiving in-country support and training from UNODC for a decade, Somsanga operates in flagrant disregard for principles stated by UNODC headquarters,” he said. “It’s the UN agency on drugs and crime but it’s routinely turning a blind eye to crimes reported in the name of drug treatment.”

When contacted by Spectrum, Gary Lewis, regional representative for the UNODC’s regional centre for East Asia and Pacific, told Spectrum that his office no longer provided assistance to Somsanga despite its website listing the centre as an “ongoing” project.

“At the present, UNODC does not provide funding or activity support to Somsanga Treatment and Rehabilitation Centre or activities in compulsory centres that are in operation in other countries in East and Southeast Asia,” Mr Lewis said, adding that UNODC’s involvement in “Project F13 [Somsanga] was completed in March this year” and that the website would be updated to reflect this.

The US embassy in Vientiane maintains there have been significant improvements at Somsanga in recent years that have seen it shift from a law-enforcement tool to a health-oriented facility that provides genuine treatment, occupational therapy and vocational training to patients.

Mike Pryor, the deputy public affairs officer at the US embassy in Vientiane, told Spectrum that staff there were taking the allegations in the HRW report seriously and monitoring the situation closely.

“At the same time, we believe that our recent and current projects at Somsanga in cooperation with the Lao government and the international community have resulted in a number of improvements for the population there,” Mr Pryor said.

Susan Pittman, senior press adviser at the INL, also denied knowledge of abuses at Somsanga: “Embassy personnel and our international partners have had frequent and unfettered access to Somsanga. Our interactions with patients, discussions with staff, as well as consultations with other bilateral and multilateral donors, have disclosed no reports of systematic human rights violations,” said Ms Pittman.

‘NOT JUST ADDICTS’

The former detainees interviewed for the HRW report talk of being held for periods of three months to more than a year at the facility without access to a lawyer or any judicial process and no way of securing their release.

“The village militia arrested me because I was out too late. Me and my friends were just walking in the street. I was there for nine months,” the HRW report quotes “Mankon”, a former detainee who described himself as a lifelong beggar, as saying.

The report stressed that despite the institute’s mandate as a drug rehabilitation centre, the detention of homeless people and beggars such as Mankon has been widely reported even in government-run media.

The state-run Vientiane Times reported in February, 2004, that more than 30 beggars were taken to Somsanga prior to the Asean Tourism Forum meeting in the Lao capital. Similar reports on the incarceration of beggars at Somsanga were published in the local media in 2007 and 2009. In the lead-up to the 25th SEA Games in Vientiane in December, 2009, local media reported that the government even set up a telephone hotline where people could report beggars so they could be picked up and brought to Somsanga.

“The most vulnerable and marginalised of Lao society are picked up and held there to ‘clean the streets’,” HRW’s Mr Amon said.

REGIONWIDE PROBLEM

The HRW and other human rights agencies including the OHCHR say that regardless of what might incur during their time at Somsanga detainees there are victims of arbitrary detention. The former detainees interviewed by HRW said they arrived at the centre without a formal legal hearing and were stuck there without means to appeal. HRW and other concerned agencies say this trend of arbitrary detention in the guise of drug rehabilitation that they allege is taking place at Somsanga is becoming commonplace regionwide.

In December, 2010, UN agencies convened a meeting in Bangkok to discuss alternatives to compulsory drug detention centres.

Jointly convened by the UNODC and UNAids, the summary record of the meeting states that ”despite the fact that evidence shows that the practice is neither effective nor efficient, the [compulsory drug detention centre] model has expanded in recent years, with hundreds of thousands of people detained from months to years at a time. Current evidence shows that this expansion has resulted in increased risk of HIV infection, increased stigma and prejudice, as well as human rights violations.”

In Vietnam, more than 40,000 people are currently detained in 123 drug-rehabilitation centres, according to government figures.

There as in Laos, the rehabilitation centres exist outside of the courts. Police in Vietnam dispatch the majority of those they deem drug addicts to the camps. An HRW report from last month alleges that detainees at the camps are subject to torture and forced labour.

”Forced labour and physical abuse are not an adjunct to drug dependency treatment in Vietnam,” the report says. ”Rather, they are central to how the centres operate.”

An HRW report from last year details a similar situation in Cambodia, where it says more than 2,000 people pass through the country’s 11 detention centres, where they are subjected to conditions similar to military drills, hard labour and forced exercise.

Another HRW report estimates that there are some 350,000 drug users in forced rehabilitation centres, also without access to due process.

Another UN agency, Unicef, was a key supporter of the Choam Chao Youth Rehabilitation Centre in Cambodia, but pulled out following reports in local and international media outlining abusive practices there.

Homayoun Alizadeh, the OHCHR regional representative for Southeast Asia, told Spectrum that the number of people in such facilities throughout the region requires a concerted approach, particularly from all related UN agencies.

”We have a huge number of people that are held in so-called rehabilitation centres against their will and unnecessarily and this is a clear violation of their human rights,” he said. ”We are discussing this among ourselves. This especially is our task, to convince our UN colleagues that what they do should be in accordance with international human rights laws, and not based just on the programme of what the respective government wants.”

Despite the role the UNODC has played in establishing the centre, Mr Lewis says his office opposes the ”compulsory centre approach for people who use drugs because the approach provides neither effective drug treatment nor rehabilitation.

”In our view, the international community can and should promote the process of shifting towards voluntary, community-based treatment by helping develop, and fund, an approach which leads to their being phased out. Funding should now specifically target community-based alternatives which involve all relevant government and non-government partners in Lao PDR.”

The UNODC representative said however, that ultimately it is up to the Lao government to determine when it makes the shift to community-based voluntary drug treatment programmes.

But according to HRW, some members of international organisations familiar with drug issues in Laos had said that the impetus to build such centres comes from international donors, not the Lao government.

”External donors are encouraging Lao PDR to continue to build and run these [drug detention] centres. Eight new centres were built with external funding over the last few years. In my experience, Lao decision makers know very well the limitations of these centres,” an unnamed official was quoted in the HRW report as saying.

Aside from Somsanga, the oldest and largest facility of its type, the report lists other centres based on similar models in Champasak province (supported by Thailand), Savanakhet and and Bokeo (supported by the US), Oudomxay (supported by China), Luang Prabang (supported by Japan), as well as two facilities in Xayaburi (supported by Brunei).

The support for Somsanga from the specific country teams of UNODC and the US Embassy in Vientiane seems to be in contradiction to the stance held by country offices elsewhere in the region, says HRW, which has called for the facility’s closure and urged UNODC and other donors to review or withdraw all funding and launch investigations into the alleged human rights abuses.

”Plenty of things slip under the radar when it comes to Lao PDR. Quite rightly, the US Embassy in Cambodia told us it would have nothing to do with drug detention centres in that country, and the US Embassy in Vietnam has called for Vietnam’s centres to be eliminated. But in Lao PDR the US Embassy actually constructs buildings and fences,” Mr Amon said.

Lao government agencies refused comment when contacted by Spectrum.

About the author

Writer: Ismail Wolff