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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Laos
Index
Japanese troops moved into the towns and quickly
imprisoned
French officials and their families and confiscated their
property.
Prince Phetsarath, after ordering Laotian civil servants
to
continue their duties as usual, left Vientiane for
Louangphrabang
to be with the king.
After being delayed on the roads from Xiangkhoang and
Vientiane
by the Franco-Laotian guerrillas (of whom the Hmong were
particularly effective), two battalions of Japanese troops
finally
arrived in Louangphrabang on April 7. They found the
French gone.
A Japanese representative suggested that the king proclaim
Laos's
independence and send someone to discuss the terms of
LaotianJapanese cooperation. Sisavang Vong replied that he would
stay with
his people and that his attitude toward the French would
not
change. Laos was too small to be independent, but if he
was obliged
to accept independence he would do so. At the same time,
he
reluctantly issued a proclamation on April 8 ending the
French
protectorate. The king secretly entrusted Prince
Kindavong, a
younger half-brother of Phetsarath, with the mission of
representing him in the Allied councils abroad while he
maintained
clandestine contact with the Franco-Laotian guerrillas in
Laos. He
also sent Crown Prince Savang Vatthana to Japanese
headquarters in
Saigon, where he vigorously protested the Japanese
actions.
Phetsarath no doubt saw some good coming from the turn
of
events. The Japanese had told him that they intended that
the
king's proclamation of independence apply to all of Laos.
Interested in the unity of Laos, he gave the Japanese a
proposal
for unifying the Laotian civil service. Phetsarath also
opened an
account of the royal treasury with the Indochinese
treasury in
Hanoi, which gave the kingdom greater fiscal autonomy.
Problems
began to appear almost immediately, however. At the end of
June,
the coffers were empty in spite of an infusion of money
brought
back from Saigon by the crown prince. Japan, no longer
able to
provide for the salaries of the Laotian administration,
allowed the
civil service to languish.
Beyond this was the Vietnamese problem. In 1943 the six
chief
towns of Laos counted 30,300 Vietnamese inhabitants out of
their
total population of 51,150. Vietnamese occupied key
positions in
the federal civil service, public works, posts and
telegraph,
treasury, customs, and police. The political dangers to
Laos of the
Vietnamese presence were demonstrated on April 8 when
Vietnamese
residents of Khang Khay tried to detach Tran Ninh
(Xiangkhoang), an
integral part of the territory of the Kingdom of
Louangphrabang,
from Laos and attach it to Vietnam.
After their coup de force, the Japanese put
prices on
the heads of the Franco-Laotian guerrillas and anyone
caught
helping them. In spite of the danger, the guerrillas
sought
recruits in the countryside and stepped up their armed
attacks
against Japanese communications, virtually cutting off
several
towns. The guerrillas' message to Laotian civil servants:
disregard
the Japanese-inspired proclamation of independence and
carry on
your regular duties without helping the Japanese. Chao
khoueng (provincial governors) who joined the
guerrillas and
chao muang (district chiefs) faced the hard
decision of
leaving behind their colleagues and sometimes their
families.
Whereas many of the leading Lao and tribal figures
supported the
Franco-Laotian guerrillas, some families had divided
loyalties.
After Japan's surrender, Phetsarath acted on the
premise that
the king's proclamation of independence was still in
force. On
August 28, 1945, he sent a telegram to all provincial
governors
notifying them that the Japanese surrender did not affect
independence and warning them to resist any foreign
intervention in
their administration. Phetsarath also refused to recognize
the
authority of the French résident supérieur when he
was
released from prison. Three days earlier, however, Colonel
Hans
Imfeld, commissioner of the French Republic, had entered
Louangphrabang with a party of Franco-Laotian guerrillas
and had
received assurances from the king that the protectorate
was still
in force. Japanese troops having withdrawn to the south, a
party of
Franco-Laotian guerrillas under the command of Major Fabre
entered
Vientiane peacefully on September 3 to await developments.
French
civilians released from internment were evacuated.
Vietnamese residents in Vientiane and other towns had
already
begun spreading anti-French propaganda and making
preparations to
resist the French. In these actions, they were guided by
agents of
the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), a Marxist-Leninist
party
founded in 1930 by Ho Chi Minh. The ICP adhered to a
Leninist
strategy of seizing power by revolutionary
action--national
liberation followed by the transition to socialism. The
ICP had
established cells in Laos in the early 1930s made up
entirely of
Vietnamese.
The Vietnamese agitation came to a head with a large
demonstration in Vientiane on August 23. Phetsarath
favored taking
advantage of the French difficulties. However, as head of
government, his autonomy was restricted not only by the
wishes of
the king, but also by the 1941 arrangement with the French
that had
made the crown prince the chairman of the King's Council.
The
French design had, perhaps intentionally, created an
ambiguity that
made for conflict. On September 2, Phetsarath sent a
message to the
king requesting a royal proclamation of the unity of Laos.
While he was dealing with these matters, Phetsarath
received an
unsolicited message on September 3 from Prince
Souphanouvong,
another of his half-brothers. Souphanouvong had spent the
previous
sixteen years working as an engineer in Vietnam.
Souphanouvong flew
from Vinh to Hanoi in an aircraft provided by the United
States
Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to meet with Ho Chi
Minh, who
had just proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in
Hanoi in
the name of the
Viet Minh (see Glossary),
an ICP front
organization. (Although OSS personnel were not authorized
to
operate in Indochina, the OSS station in Kunming, China,
took
advantage of a mandate for OSS teams to perform prisoner
of war
(POW) recovery work to enter Indochina.) Prince
Souphanouvong said
he was in a position to represent the interests of Laos
and asked
for instructions. On September 5, he sent another message
to
Phetsarath saying that he had begun to negotiate with the
Vietnamese for aid in the independence struggle and to
form "an
Indochinese bloc opposing the return of colonialism."
Phetsarath
rejected Souphanouvong's offer.
The official United States position, communicated to
France,
was that there was no question concerning France's
sovereignty over
Indochina. At the end of August, President Harry S. Truman
was
personally assured by de Gaulle that Indochina would be
granted
independence once the status quo before the Japanese
aggression had
been restored. Meanwhile, United States recognition of
French
sovereignty was qualified by the proviso that the French
claim of
support by the Indochinese populations be borne out by
future
events. Apparently without the knowledge of Washington,
however, an
OSS team that reached Vientiane in September--escorted by
members
of the Lao Pen Lao newly returned from Thailand--assured
Phetsarath
that the French would not be allowed to return. The team
advised
Phetsarath to await the arrival of the Inter-Allied
Commission that
was to decide his country's future. This information
misled
Phetsarath into believing that the international community
supported an independent Laos.
However, on September 7, Phetsarath was informed by the
minister of interior that a royal proclamation had
continued the
French protectorate over the Kingdom of Louangphrabang. On
September 15, with the Inter-Allied Commission nowhere in
sight,
Phetsarath issued a proclamation that unified the Kingdom
of
Louangphrabang with the four southern provinces of
Khammouan,
Savannakhét, Champasak, and Saravan (Salavan). Vientiane
would be
the capital, and the Congress of People's Representatives
would
soon meet to decide all political, economic, and social
questions.
On September 21, Fabre demanded the dismissal of Xieng
Mao
(also known as Phaya Khammao, or Khammao Vilay), the
provincial
governor since 1941, for anti-French activities, and his
replacement by Kou Voravong. The next day, an advance
guard of the
Chinese Nationalist troops responsible for receiving the
surrender
of the Japanese arrived by boat down the Mekong. They
appeared more
interested in buying up the opium crop (harvested from
late
December to early February) than in disarming the already
departed
Japanese.
Data as of July 1994
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