Asia Europe People's Forum

Where is Sombath Sompone? (Intervention at event, “Where is Sombath Sompone?,” FCCT, Bangkok, Dec 16, 2024) By Walden Bello* It was about three weeks after Sombath’s forced disappearance that I went to Vientiane in the middle of January 2014, along with MP Charles Santiago of Malaysia and MP Lily Wahid of Indonesia. We were received by top officials of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, perhaps thinking that the Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) in whose behalf we had travelled to Vientiane was an official body of Asean. The officials we met had different responses, which means that they had not gotten their act together. Some said they had no knowledge of Sombath’s disappearance. Some were defensive and said that the police had nothing to do with it. Some said he might have been kidnapped by non-state actors. The head of the government’s human rights commission admitted that Sombath’s was not the first case of disappearance of a public figure. The permanent secretary of the Foreign Ministry did make a significant admission though, and this was that Sombath had entered the police car, as seen on CCTV, but that he did so “voluntarily.” I think there were subsequent parliamentary delegations that visited Laos, but, if I recall right, they did not have access to high officials of the Lao PDR. And they received only one version of Sombath’s force disappearance: “We don’t know what happened to Sombath. We’re still investigating.” This meant the government had gotten its act together. Forced disappearances are, unfortunately, a problem not only in Laos but in other countries of the region. There’s the case of the disappeared human rights lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit, the husband of Senator Angkana, here in Thailand. There’s the case of Jonas Burgos in the Philippines. It is a problem globally. A few months ago, I visited the Parque de Memoria in Buenos Aires, where the names of 30,000 disappeared are written on slabs of concrete over one one kilometer long. I attended the weekly protest rally of the mothers of the disappeared, the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, and was invited to speak. I spoke about the case of Sombath. For a global problem, we must have a global response. It is not enough to have laws forbidding enforced disappearances. It is not enough to have multilateral institutions monitoring forced disappearances. Civil society must organize regionally and globally to counter the repressive agencies of the state that are congenitally and structurally disposed to act with impunity. Without counter-pressure from below, these agencies will always be tempted to act with impunity and with no accountability. We need to never for one moment cease our efforts to make them accountable. We will not be able to eliminate the problems of disappearances and extrajudicial execution until we abolish or at the very least radically reduce the power of the security forces. So long as these institutions exist that consider the people as the enemy, disappearances and extrajudicial executions will recur unless there is constant counter-pressure, constant monitoring, continuing demands for accountability. The case of Sombath underlines the dangers posed by the security forces of the state, any state. Sombath was no radical. In fact, he wanted to help the government by offering advice and proposals on how it should assist the poor and the marginalized. Yet they abducted him, and until today, they have not told Shui-Meng, his partner, or anybody where he is. So on this 12th anniversary of his disappearance, Focus on the Global South joins Shui-Meng Ng and so many others in asking the Lao PDR government the question, “Where is Sombath?” @HamidMirPAK @ammaralijan @_AEPF @AsianPeoplesMvt @WaldenBello