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Word: charly (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
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...area of Laos cut off to outsiders and populated only by the military and the Hmong, it is impossible to verify the claims made by Va Char, Ka Ying and Hmong who claim on the tape that the Lao army was responsible for the deaths. Asked by TIME about Va Char's allegations, the Lao Foreign Ministry said: "According to the description of the tape, we think there is a lot of fabrication floating around. It could be a fabrication harming the good image of the Lao People's Democratic Republic by ill-intentioned groups." A Lao official who spoke...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: A Blackbird's Song | 9/13/2004 | See Source »

...safely in the U.S., Va Char hopes to travel to Washington to screen the tape and give evidence before Congress. "The U.S. has an obligation to help these people," he said last week from California. "They are dying because their parents helped the U.S. in the war. It's not right." American pressure groups-some made up of Lao who resettled in the U.S. after the war, some including former U.S. CIA operatives who assisted the Hmong-are likely to use the tape as evidence that allies of the U.S. have been left behind in the jungles of Southeast Asia...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: A Blackbird's Song | 9/13/2004 | See Source »

...Char is not a Hmong, but a Lao trader who for years made a comfortable living selling supplies to remote mountain communities around Phonsavanh. "He was very well liked and respected," says a villager in the district. "He always helped people out if he could." In 1993, says Va Char, a Hmong business contact told him about a remote community in the jungle that needed supplies. "I had never been political until I went to the jungle," he says. "I went there carrying salt and shoes, expecting to find a normal mountain village. Instead I was faced with thousands...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: A Blackbird's Song | 9/13/2004 | See Source »

...Char says he returned to his village determined to help. For the next four years he recruited family and friends into a network that occasionally ferried supplies to the Hmong. In 1997, he was arrested and jailed for two years. "I was so angry," he said. "I was helping people who were suffering, who were not bad. Children were dying. It was not right." Released in 1999, he made contact with the Fact Finding Commission, a Hmong human-rights group in the U.S., which was trying to make contact with the Hmong trapped in the mountains. They supplied Va Char...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: A Blackbird's Song | 9/13/2004 | See Source »

...After his escape in 2003, Va Char moved from house to house, sleeping occasionally in rice fields. But the net was closing around his family, and the Blackbird network had been compromised. Va Char says he was faced with a grim choice: to try to sneak out of Laos undetected or join those on the run in the jungle. He decided to return to the Hmong with his video camera. "I knew if I left the country, or was killed, no one would hear from the Hmong again," he said...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: A Blackbird's Song | 9/13/2004 | See Source »

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