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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Laos
Index
"Seminar camps," also called reeducation centers, were
the
centerpiece of the new regime's policy toward the enemies
it had
defeated. The LPRP's Marxist-Leninist dogma allowed no
respite in
the class struggle, and those identified as its former
enemies were
the presumed saboteurs and subversives of the socialist
phase of
the revolution that was just getting under way. After its
victory,
the regime made people judged unfit to participate in the
new
society in their present frame of mind construct a series
of camps,
known only by their numbers. They included Camp 01 at Sop
Hao; Camp
03 near Na Kai, newly given the Pali name Viangxai,
meaning
"Victorious Town"; Camp 05 near Muang Xamteu; and Camps 04
and 06
near Muang Et, all in Houaphan. A camp was also built at
Muang
Khoua on the Nam Ou, and others were built in the center
and south.
There are no official figures on the numbers of people
sent for
reeducation, because the camp network was kept a secret
from the
outside world. The only information was brought out by
former
inmates and their families. Various published estimates
have put
the number of inmates at 30,000, at 37,600, and at 50,000.
Even before the communist takeover, the first groups of
highlevel officials, including provincial governors and
district
chiefs, had been transported to the camps, arriving in
full dress
uniform. They had received letters signed by Souvanna
Phouma
ordering them to attend an important meeting in Vientiane.
After an
overnight stay in Vientiane, the group was flown to the
Plain of
Jars, where a festive atmosphere prevailed. The officials,
about
seventy in all, were feted with food and a movie, and
North
Vietnamese advisers were present. They were then flown to
Houaphan,
separated into small groups, and organized into work
parties.
In August and September 1977, a group of twenty-six
"reactionary" high-ranking officials and military officers
in Camp
05 were accused of plotting a coup and arrested. These
persons were
taken away to Camp 01. They included Pheng Phongsavan, the
minister
who had signed the Vientiane Agreement; Touby Lyfoung, the
Hmong
leader; Soukhan Vilaysan, another of Souvanna Phouma's
ministers
who had been with him in the Lao Issara and had risen to
become
secretary general of the Neutralists; and Generals
Bounphone
Maekthepharak and Ouan Ratikoun. All died in Camp 01.
Thus, those
who played roles in the modern history of Laos were
relegated by
the regime to the status of nonpersons and their fate
placed in the
hands of their prison guards. Others, like Tiao Sisoumang
Sisaleumsak, a minister in Souvanna Phouma's 1960
government,
General Sengsouvanh Souvannarath, commander of the
Neutralist
forces, Khamchan Pradith, an intellectual and diplomat,
and even
Sing Chanthakoummane, a lieutenant in the Second Paratroop
Battalion in 1960, were held in seminar camps for fifteen
years or
more before being released. Souvanna Phouma was allowed to
live
quietly in Vientiane until his death in January 1984.
The new regime feared that ex-King Savang Vatthana, who
until
March 1977 had lived quietly in the royal palace as a
private
citizen with the meaningless title of adviser to President
Souphanouvong, would become a symbol of popular
resistance. As a
result, he was suddenly spirited away by helicopter to
Houaphan
along with Queen Khamboui and Crown Prince Say Vongsavang.
Imprisoned in Camp 01, the crown prince died on May 2,
1978, and
the king eleven days later of starvation. The queen died
on
December 12, 1981. According to an eyewitness, all were
buried in
unmarked graves outside the camp's perimeter. No official
announcement was made. More than a decade later, during a
visit to
France in December 1989, Kaysone confirmed reports of the
king's
death in an innocuous aside that attributed it to old age.
The party did not dare abolish the Buddhist community
of monks
and novices, the clergy (sangha), of which the king
had been
the supreme patron. It did, however, attempt to reshape
the
sangha into an instrument of control. In March
1979, the
Venerable Thammayano, the eighty-seven-year-old
Sangha-raja of
Laos, the country's highest-ranking abbott, fled by
floating across
the Mekong on a raft of inflated car tubes. His secretary,
who
engineered the escape, reported that the Sangha-raja had
been
confined to his monastery in Louangphrabang and was
forbidden to
preach. Ordinary monks were not forbidden to preach, but
their
sermons were commonly tape recorded and monitored for
signs of
dissidence. As a result of these pressures, the number of
monks in
Laos decreased sharply after 1975
(see Buddhism
, ch. 2).
Data as of July 1994
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