Word: char
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...July 28, a traveling salesman from Laos left Bangkok for asylum in the U.S. Va Char Yang, 38, now lives in Oroville, California, with his wife, Mai Vang, and three small children. A year earlier, in Laos, he had been sentenced to 20 years in prison for crimes including possession of illegal explosives and drugs. At the time, U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that the trial fell "well short of international standards of jurisprudence." Va Char had been arrested while escorting two European journalists and their American Hmong translator out of the jungle in Xaysomboune Special Zone...
...Char was not present to hear his sentence. Two days after he had been captured in June 2003, he says, he escaped from the toilet of a police guardhouse. Over the next year, he was the subject of a manhunt, with a reward of $15,000 on his head-this in a nation where the average person makes $2 a day. "People were walking around with guns for weeks hoping to try and kill him," says a rice farmer living in a village close to Phonsavanh, Va Char's hometown. But Va Char managed to elude those seeking him. According...
...Char carried with him a videotape, which TIME has seen. The tape, which shows the life of a small band of Hmong, is deeply disturbing. The first footage-dated June 19, 2003-shows images of an emaciated baby. A girl cradles him in her arms, trying to feed him cassava roots crushed into a paste. Another child lies limp on the floor, her belly bloated from hunger. Their mother, unable to produce breast milk, was, says Va Char, out in the jungle searching for food. Outside the hut lies another child, too weak too pull himself out of the dirt...
...footage shot, according to Va Char and Ka Ying Yang, one of the Hmong band, on May 19, 2004, that is most dramatic. The film shows what Va Char says are the dead bodies of five young Hmong in the deep jungle. They are the victims, say Va Char and Ka Ying, of an ambush by Lao government troops on the Hmong-an ambush that Va Char says he watched while hiding in the jungle by the side of a path...
...Nyonya, which serves a spicy, delicious blend of Chinese and Malaysian cuisine, caused much head scratching. The beautiful curved-glass windows with a minimal interior designed by London's Four IV gives little away and, to the uninitiated, menu entries with names like otak-otak and ju hu char don't help much...