December 16, 2007

 

More American Journalists Visited The Remote Jungle of Laos

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Laos is known to be a state controlled media country where foreign journalists are unlikely to be allowed entrance to cover stories the LPDR government intends to keep secret from the outside world.  Within the last few weeks, to American journalists joined the select group of those that have ventured deep into the remote jungles of Laos to tell the story of a forgotten people.

 

Since 2003, there have been a total of seven different trips where foreign journalists managed to sneak into the remote jungle of northern Laos to cover the ongoing persecution of families of the U.S. backed Secret Army against Communism in the 1960s.  One team of journalists was detained by the Lao government in June 2003 where their films and videotapes were confiscated and destroyed.  Others managed to securely walk out of Laos with their findings to tell the world about this forgotten American ally - the Hmong.

 

In July of 2006, while Americans were celebrating Independence Day, an American photojournalist, Roger Arnold, trekked through the remote jungle north of the popular tourist city of Vang Vieng, Vientiane Province, to report on the massacre of the 26 Hmong civilian who were gunned down by Lao military while foraged for food.  Arnold was the first American journalist to have visited this desperate and forgotten group of American allies who were abandoned by the U.S. government when the war ended in Southeast Asia.  To this day, they remain loyal to the United States and are pleading to be rescued.

 

In November of this year, while Americans were celebrating Thanksgiving, two more American journalists spent the time away from their families and loved ones, and made a heroic effort to visit another U.S. Secret Veterans group in the remote jungle of Laos.  Thomas Fuller, correspondent for The New York Times and International Herald Tribune newspaper, and Tomas Van Houtryve, a freelance photographer, trekked through the remote jungle in Vientiane Province to visit a small pocket of the U.S. Secret Army and their families who have been on the run to escape the communist retribution since 1975.

 

This is their finding to this most recent trip:

 

NY Times Article:            Old U.S. Allies, Still Hiding Deep in Laos

 

IHT Article:           A Desperate Life for Survivors of the Secret War in Laos

 

Photo:          On the run in the jungle

 

Video:          Hiding in the Jungles of Laos

 

 

The Fact Finding Commission is dedicated to exposing the plight of the veterans of the U.S. Secret War who have hid in the mountains and jungles of Laos for the past thirty years to escape the retribution of the communist Lao government for their loyalty services to the United States during the U.S. Secret War in Southeast Asia.

 

 

 

 

 

News Releases

www.factfinding.org

Photo by Tomas Van Houtryve

Left: An isolated Hmong village hiding in deep remote jungle of Laos from Communist retribution for their  parents and grandparents’ involvement with the Americans during the Vietnam War era.

 

Right: Children and grandchildren of the U.S. War veterans living under constant fear of being hunt down by the combine Lao and Vietnamese military forces.

Photo by Tomas Van Houtryve