Groups pressure Laos to find seized activist

Asean – of which Laos is a member – was also urged to help in the search for Sombath.

Sombath – who is also a Magsaysay award winner – went missing on December 15, 2012 while driving home from his office in the capital city of Vientiane. Surveillance cameras at a police check point on Thadua Road captured him getting out of his jeep and later walking with unidentified men into another pickup truck before being driven away. 

Analysis of the CCTV footage shows that Sombath was taken away in the presence of police officers who witnessed the abduction and failed to intervene - a fact that strongly suggests government complicity, according to human right groups.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said yesterday that Canada was concerned that after two years, the Lao government has been unable to provide further information on Sombath’s whereabouts. 

“We call upon Laos to respect its international commitments, and to fully and transparently investigate and report on Mr Sombath’s disappearance. We urge the Laotian government to do everything possible to ensure that Mr Sombath is safely reunited with his family without delay,” Baird said in a statement.

Meanwhile, 82 regional and international human rights groups signed an open petition condemning the Lao government’s ongoing refusal to provide any information regarding Sombath’s fate or whereabouts. 

They also demanded the Asean community take necessary action on the  disappearance of the Lao social activist. “Our organisations believe that Asean member states, as well as the Asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, must break the silence on this matter,” they said in a statement.

Instead of invoking the principle of non-interference into one another’s internal affairs, Asean member states must act as responsible members of the international community, the statement said. It called on Laos to uphold the 10-nation bloc’s key tenets enshrined in the Asean Charter, which recognises the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. 

Sombath’s enforced disappearance is not an isolated incident. To this day, the whereabouts of nine people arbitrarily detained by Lao security forces in November 2009 in various locations across the country remain unknown, the human right groups said. 

The nine had planned peaceful demonstrations -calling for democracy and respect for human rights. The whereabouts of Somphone Khantisouk is also unknown. 

Somphone, the owner of an ecotourism guesthouse, was an outspoken critic of Chinese-sponsored agricultural projects that were damaging the environment in the northern province of Luang Namtha. He disappeared after uniformed men abducted him in January 2007.