Word: communist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...incident is the latest step in a decades-old dance involving Laos' communists, the Hmong and the U.S. In the lead-up to the Vietnam War, North Vietnam carved a maze of transportation routes through the jungles of Laos, creating a crucial supply link later known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Laos was in the middle of a civil war between the Royal Lao government and the communist Pathet Lao. Seeking to disrupt the North's supply routes, the Americans enlisted the help of the Royal Lao government's highest-ranking Hmong leader, Vang Pao. He welcomed American guns...
...armed bands still live in the Laotian highlands, refusing to surrender to the government of Laos. Earlier this month, there were signs that the conflict might be easing: Vang Pao, now 80 and living in California, said he wanted to return home and help reconcile the Hmong and the Communist government in Vientiane. But officials reportedly replied that they'd welcome him back by executing him. It's no wonder Thailand's Hmong refugees are worried that the rulers of their homeland still hold a grudge...
...possible in the West. Following a two-hour trial on Dec. 23, the literary critic Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison in Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court. His crime: writing a series of essays questioning the monopoly on power of the Communist Party as well as compiling a manifesto demanding political reform and increased democracy. The ruling said Liu was guilty of "inciting subversion of state power," a charge the government usually reserves for the political activists it dislikes most...
...Meanwhile, the communist regime has placed a slew of nationalistic holidays around Christmas, though their timing is probably a coincidence. On December 24, many North Koreans observe the birthday of Kim Jong Suk - the deceased mother of dictator Kim Jong Il and a revolutionary hero - by making pilgrimages to her birthplace of Hoeryong, a town in the northeast. Three days later, they are given a day off work for Constitution Day. Even New Years' Day is more about revolutionary zeal than ushering in 2010, when thousands of North Koreans will walk in a yearly procession to the Kumsusan Memorial Palace...
...universities across the capital. Later, as Christianity gained popularity, worshippers held group prayers in public every Christmas. But after the Japanese government took control of Korea in 1910, the new administration began suppressing religious gatherings, and by the 1950s, - after the Korean War left the peninsula split into a communist north and capitalist south, - the northern government began to carry out executions of thousands of Christians for the years to come...