Vientiane, Laos - Lao authorities have denied the existence of secret jails in which members of the Hmong minority have allegedly been imprisoned since their forced return to the country last month, media reports said Tuesday.
"There is no secret jail at all in Borlikhamxay province," Brigadier General Bouasieng Champaphanh, chairman of the Lao-Thai border security subcommittee, said Monday in Vientiane, according to the Vientiane Times.
"I can take you to visit the province tomorrow to find out the information firsthand if you want," Bouasieng said at a press conference at the Foreign Ministry, which foreign diplomats attended.
His comments were in response to a Radio Free Asia report that the government had set up a secret prison in the central province and jailed some of the 4,500 Lao Hmong who were repatriated from detention camps in Thailand on December 28.
The mass deportation of the Hmong, an ethnic minority who were used by the US military in its secret war against communist forces in Laos in the 1960s and 1970s, sparked international condemnation of both the Thai and Lao governments.
There were fears that the returnees would face imprisonment and persecution in Laos, which went communist in 1975 and remains a one-party state. "Prior to repatriation, we promised them that they would not be convicted or prosecuted at all," Bouasieng was quoted as saying. "We will always keep our promises."
While inviting diplomats to visit Hmong resettlement sites in Borlikhamxay, Bouasieng said it would take two months to prepare such visits.
"Roads are in a bad condition, and there is also no appropriate place for helicopters to land at the moment," he said. "Please give us two months more to get things done. When things are ready, we will invite you to visit."
Diplomats and three US congressmen were allowed to visit some of the camps in early January.
Regarding the Hmong's resettlement in third countries, Bouasieng said most of them had expressed a desire to remain but special consideration might be extended to those who have been classified as "persons of concern" by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
"If there are some that still want external resettlement and some countries express willingness to receive them, we will consider such requests in line with relevant Lao laws," he said.
Laos has denied the UN access to the Hmong returnees, claiming that the agency made a mistake in classifying them as political refugees.
The UN's refugee agency has expressed concern about 150 Hmong whom the agency classified as persons of concern because of their past records as resistance fighters.
Several Western countries have offered to accept members from that group for resettlement.
Tens of thousands of Hmong fled to Thailand after communist forces took over Laos in 1975.
More than 100,000 Hmong were resettled in the United States. Laos, one of the world's few remaining communist states, has been courting overseas Laotians to return home to invest in the country, one of the world's poorest.
The government's treatment of the Hmong returnees is deemed an important litmus test for the success of that campaign, Thai diplomats said.
