Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/Laos.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Laos. Some of these links may lead to websites
that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false. No
attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on
this page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of
particular interest to you. You might
be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical
information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a
criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the courtroom. Perhaps your paper might focus on some of
the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures, starvation, thirst,
sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing water. On the other hand, you might choose to
write about the people acting in an official capacity who perpetrate such
cruelty. There is a lot to the subject
of Torture by Authorities. Scan other
countries as well as this one. Draw
comparisons between activity in adjacent countries and/or regions. Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources
that are available on-line. ***
ARCHIVES *** 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Laos U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor,
30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/laos/
[accessed 26 July
2021] TORTURE AND OTHER CRUEL,
INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT In 2019 civil
society organizations and lawyers claimed some prisoners were beaten or given
electric shocks. International media reported in 2019 that prisoners arrested
for protesting loss of access to land were subjected to electric shocks
following their arrest and suffered from malnourishment and poor health after
being jailed for more than a year. In April 2019 Sy
Phong, imprisoned since 2011 for leading land
protests in Salavan Province, died; the government
said his death was from natural causes, but others claim he was tortured. PRISON AND DETENTION
CENTER CONDITIONS Prison and
detention facility conditions varied widely and in some prisons were harsh
due to minimal food supply, overcrowding, and inadequate medical care. Physical
Conditions: Prison cells were crowded, with beds no wider than 20 inches.
Some prisons reportedly held juveniles with adults, although no official or
reliable statistics were available on the overall population or gender of
prisoners countrywide. Due to a lack of space, pretrial detainees and
convicted prisoners were held together. There was no information available on
the prevalence of death in prisons or pretrial detention centers, although
one lawyer claimed in 2019 that some prisoners had died due to overheating at
a recently opened prison in Vientiane Province. ARREST PROCEDURES
AND TREATMENT OF DETAINEES Pretrial Detention:
The law limits detention without trial to one year. The length of detention
without a pretrial hearing or formal charges is also limited to one year. The
Office of the Prosecutor General reportedly made efforts to have authorities
bring all prisoners to trial within the one-year limit, but officials
occasionally did not meet the requirement. The exact number of detainees held
more than a year was unknown. Freedom House
Country Report 2018 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/laos/freedom-world/2018 [accessed 17 May
2020] F3. IS THERE
PROTECTION FROM THE ILLEGITIMATE USE OF PHYSICAL FORCE AND FREEDOM FROM WAR
AND INSURGENCIES? Security forces
often illegally detain suspects. Prison conditions are substandard, with
reports of inadequate food and medical facilities. Torture of prisoners is
occasionally reported. Laos: #WhereIsSombath Amnesty
International AI, 30 August 2016 www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/08/laos-sombath-day-of-the-disappeared/ [accessed 6 January
2019] As the
International Day of the Disappeared is marked around the world, the Laos
authorities must promptly, thoroughly and effectively investigate the abduction
and suspected enforced disappearance of Sombath Somphone, Amnesty International said today. On 15 December
2012, Sombath Somphone, a
leading member of Lao civil society, was stopped by traffic police and taken
away in a pick-up truck. His whereabouts remain unknown, his family has not
been kept informed by the authorities, and there has been no credible
investigation into his enforced disappearance. “More than three
years have passed since Sombath Somphone
was last seen. We have no alternative but to conclude that the authorities
are either directly responsible for his disappearance, or have failed
miserably to take all necessary measures to get to the bottom of what
happened,” said Rafendi Djamin,
Amnesty International’s Director for South East Asia and the Pacific. Sombath Somphone’s disappearance was chillingly captured on CCTV.
In the video, he is last seen stopped at a police post, and asked to step out
of his car by traffic police. Moments later, a motorcyclist arrives at the
scene, abandons his motorcycle and drives away in Sombath
Somphone’s car. A few minutes
later, another man emerges from the police post, and waits by the side of the
road. Soon, a pick-up truck arrives, with its lights flashing. Sombath Somphone and others get
into the truck. The truck then leaves, with armed people riding a motorcycle
leading the way. The passenger on the motorcycle fires a gunshot in the air. Amnesty
International is deeply worried by the lack of progress into any
investigation into Sombath Somphone’s
whereabouts. The Laos authorities have failed to keep his family and others
informed about the case. They have also rebuffed requests from other
countries to help investigate his fate, and failed to respond to appeals from
the United Nations, the European Parliament and Archbishop Desmond Tutu in
his case. Somsanga’s
Secrets Human Rights Watch,
11 October 2011 www.hrw.org/reports/2011/10/11/somsanga-s-secrets-0 [accessed 31 January
2015] This report examines
conditions in the Somsanga Treatment and Rehabilitation Center, which has
received a decade of international support from the United States, the United
Nations, and other donors. Detainees are held without due process, and many
are locked in cells inside barbed wire compounds. Former detainees told Human
Rights Watch that they had been held for periods of three months to more than
a year. Police and guards are a constant presence, and those who try to
escape may be brutally beaten. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL From an old article -- URL not available Article was
published sometime prior to 2015 ENFORCED
DISAPPEARANCES
- On 15 December, Sombath Somphone,
a respected member of Lao civil society well known for his work promoting
education and sustainable development, was taken away in a truck by unknown
persons after being stopped by police in the capital, Vientiane. He helped to
organize the Asia-Europe People’s Forum in Vientiane in October. Search … AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL For current
articles:: Search Amnesty
International Website www.amnesty.org/en/search/?q=laos+torture&ref=&year=&lang=en&adv=1&sort=relevance [accessed 6 January 2019] Scroll
Down ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Freedom House
Country Report - Political Rights: 7 Civil Liberties: 6 Status: Not Free 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2009/laos [accessed 26 June
2012] LONG
URL ç 2009 Country Reports begin on Page 21 [accessed 13 May
2020] The courts are
corrupt and controlled by the LPRP. Long delays in court hearings are common,
particularly for cases dealing with public grievances and complaints against
government abuses. Security forces often illegally detain suspects, and some
Laotians have allegedly spent more than a decade in jail without trial. Hundreds
of political activists have also been held for months or years without trial.
Prisoners are often tortured and must bribe prison officials to obtain better
food, medicine, visits from family, and more humane treatment. Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61614.htm [accessed 17
February 2011] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61614.htm [accessed 4 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – The law
prohibits the beating or torture of an arrested person. In practice members
of the police and security forces sometimes abused prisoners, especially
those suspected of associations with the insurgency; however, there were
anecdotal reports that abuse has decreased in recent years. In the past
detainees sometimes were subjected to beatings and long‑term solitary
confinement in completely darkened rooms, and in many cases they were
detained in leg chains or wooden stocks for long periods. Former inmates
reported that degrading treatment, the chaining and manacling of prisoners,
and solitary confinement in small unlit rooms were standard punishments in
larger prisons, while smaller provincial or district prisons employed
manacles and chains to prevent prisoners from escaping. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
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ARTICLES. Cite this
webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, "Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance
& Other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st Century- Laos",
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