Word: lao
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...victims of the war, few have had such a pitiful history as the Hmong. Recruited, armed and trained by the CIA to conduct a "secret war" in officially neutral Laos, the Hmong fought to contain Vietnamese troop movements along the Ho Chi Minh Trail through central Laos and to rescue downed American flyers involved in a covert bombing campaign. The Hmong campaign was not publicly acknowledged by the U.S. until 1994, when former CIA Director William Colby told Congress of the Hmong's "heroism and sacrifice." Shortly after the Pathet Lao regime took power in 1975-two years after...
...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...
...mountainous Xaysomboune Special Zone. The group numbered almost 200-roughly 30 families-and had been camped for two days. In the past six months, says Va Char, the group, together with some 2,000 others camped nearby, had relocated many times to stay one step ahead of the Lao patrols that often swept through the jungle...
...Ying Yang, 20, was one of the band. In an interview this summer, he told TIME that on May 19 his girlfriend, Mao Lee, 14, ignored warnings from the camp's armed guards that there might be Lao patrols in the neighborhood and went looking for cassava root along a mountain path. Mao's elder sister Chao, 16, went along, says Va Char, with a group of 12 young men and women. They set off up the mountain path. None of them carried weapons. Behind them, says Va Char, four or five other groups, perhaps 40 people in all, followed...
...leapt off the path and dived to the ground. He says he could hear the terrified screams of the young girls and persistent gunfire. Although grass and trees partially obscured his view of the scene, Va Char says he could make out what he estimates were 30 to 40 Lao soldiers standing in a loose circle and could hear them saying excitedly "Girls! Girls!" Then, he says, he heard a voice say, "Mother, please help us." Va Char says that for the next hour he heard the soldiers laughing and the girls pleading for mercy. Eventually, he says, he heard...