From: Douang2@aol.com | Block address Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2000 19:51:17 EDT Subject: [SJD] SJD BASH... To: sjd@satjadham.net Reply-to: Douang2@aol.com Add Addresses ============================================================== To reach ALL SJD members, please send to sjd@satjadham.net ... Do NOT include any other addresses when sending to the list... Include as LITTLE of the original messages as possible........ Message sent by: Douang2@aol.com *** Announcement: *** Please register for SatJaDham Fifth Annual conference at the website http://www.satjadham.org/sjd5sd/ ============================================================== Sabaidee, I came across an interesting book last week while I was doing a research at school. The book title "Indochina's Refugees, Oral Histories from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam." It was written by Joanna C. Scott in 1989. Here is a story I would like to share with you all. Laos -- Land of the Seminar Camps: Hidden to the People of the World: by Khoun Phavorabouth Part one: I went to the seminar in 1975. I was there for eight years. I was forty-two years old when I went. Now I am an old man. I was in the military--a lieutenant colonel. The Pathet Lao told me that everybody must go to the seminar camp to study and learn. We must study the Eighteen Articles of the coalition government. They sent me with the big group to a camp at Na Pha, close to Viengxay--maybe five kilometers to the south. We didn't know how we should dress so we wore our uniforms. When we first arrived on thirty people were there before us--all high-level military. Our arrival brought the number up to three hundred and eighty-six people. After that another group of fourteen joined us. There were a few bureaucrats among this last group. We were all men. Then the Pathet Lao told us, "All of you are prisoners of war." They had checked our records to find out who was strongly anti-Pathet Lao and now they had us. I spent three months there. We built the camp and we studied The Pathet Lao policy. They would say to us, "Why have you come here? Because you make a mistake. You have done everything bad to the Lao people. Your own military is serving the U.S. army. So all of you have come to this camp." Then the Pathet Lao separated us. Officers who had worked closely with the U.S. Central Intelligence were sent to Camp 05 in the Sam Teu areaabout one hundred and fifty kilometers east and south of Viengxay- a whole day by truck. I was sent to Camp 04. Major to lieutenant colonel and some midlevel bureaucrats were there. Camp 04 is near Muong Et, also a whole day by truck from Viengxay. From Muong Et to 04 Camp is one hour by walking along the Nam Et River. High mountains are on both sides of the rivers. From: Douang2@aol.com | Block address Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2000 20:37:38 EDT Subject: [SJD] SJD BASH To: sjd@satjadham.net Reply-to: Douang2@aol.com Add Addresses ============================================================== To reach ALL SJD members, please send to sjd@satjadham.net ... Do NOT include any other addresses when sending to the list... Include as LITTLE of the original messages as possible........ Message sent by: Douang2@aol.com *** Announcement: *** Please register for SatJaDham Fifth Annual conference at the website http://www.satjadham.org/sjd5sd/ ============================================================== Hidden to the People of the World: by Khoun Phavorabouth Part two: We were the first group to go to Camp 04. No one was there when we arrived. There was nothing there except jungle. Not high--fourteen to fifteen meters--but very dense. We were at the bottom of the valley. We slept under the tree at night and in the day time we worked clearing the land and building the camp. We cut down tree, cleared rice field planted banana, make a lake for fishing and more lake for breeding fish. Each morning the Pathet Lao would separate the prisoners into groups of ten to twenty people and send them to cut wood, build the barracks or construct the road. There was no breakfast before we started work unless we had save something from the night before. At six-thirty we started work. We would go ten to twenty kilometers into the mountain to cut wood. We carried it to camp on our backs. If the tree were small we would carry maybe three or four at one time. If they were big, only one--as much as we could carry. Two or three guards went with each group. While we worked they would walk around and watch us from three or four kilometers away. They did not beat us, just watched. Sometimes they would tell us to work harder. They would tell us which tree to cut, what time to go back to camp. We did not say anything to them. We were not allowed to talk to the guards. We just work. When the camp is finished it look like a military camp. There were twenty long wooden barracks about five meters by fifty. Each one would house up to fifty people. They were built on the ground. The floors were dirt and turned to mud with the rains. During the rainy season they forced us to work in the rice fields pulling plows like buffaloes. In the evenings we had meetings about the day's work--who did right, who did wrong. Then they planned the work to do next. No one ever dared to question these plans. After that was done, they talked about policy. They told us not to talk about American policy, only Soviet policy. "It's good, Soviet policy," they said. "And American policy, we don't like it," they said. We could only talk when we were told to do. We had to say that the Soviet way is good, the American way is no good. If we had not say that, they would have been angry at us. They did not get angry at me because what they told me to say I said--everything. We ate at mid day and evening. There was a little rice but not enough. Maybe three hundred grams a day. Most of the time this was all we had. Then, from time to time, they would slaughter a pig or a buffalo. Maybe once a month depending on the Pathet Lao. This one pig or buffalo would be for the whole camp--by then over a thousand people. We got none of the fish we bred for them. All the fish went to the Pathet Lao. The prisoners were not allowed any. They announced that any prisoners get caught stealing fish would be sent to jail. To be continue... Hidden to the People of the World: by Khoun Phavorabouth Part three: The jail was back down the road toward Viengxay, across the river from Sop Hao village where there use to be an old military camp. I think there had been seminarists at one stage but they were moved to Camp 05 at Sam Teu because the old Sop Hoa was on low land--a flood plain. We would go by the jail as we went out to cut wood. It is an underground. We could not see it but we knew it was there. Nobody was supposed to talk about it but we heard thing from the village people. Some of these people were sympathetic towards the seminarists and they would talk to us and tell us about a big underground jail. They told us of twenty-six high ranking officials from Camp 05 who were held there. There was also one prisoners from Camp 06, Major Khene Tuy, who had been a military policeman. No one from Camp 04 went to this jail. But no one expected to see Vientiane again either. They made plan to escape but couldn't do it. No one escaped. it is very far away over there. The jungle is too dense, the mountain is too high. T hey just stay there for the day of their dying. Thirty people died in the time I was there. When they got sick they would die. The only medicine were penicillin and streptomycin but they were old. Twice I got sick with a fever. I was too sick to work. I went to the camp dispensary. They gave me only aspirin. I did not get better so I tried Lao medicine--root water. My friends gave me food. In 1984 they pulled together Camp 04, 05, 06, and brought everyone to Camp 03, in the Sop Phane area. This is their headquarters. Then they announced on the radio, "No more seminars in Laos." They want to bluff all the people, to hide the truth from them--from the world. And everybody believed them. Everyone in the world said: "Now the seminars are no more". But they had been blind. The real truth is the seminars is still up there now. They do not call the prisoners "seminarists" any more. Now they are called "phon-la-muong-dee"---"good people." "No more seminars. The seminarists are very good people now," they said. But they are still there working. They are still prisoners. Six hundred of them. The world does not know about them. To be continue... Hidden to the People of the World: by Khoun Phavorabouth The Conclusion: Those people still living and still in condition to work have been dispersed throughout the Sop Pane area, one hundred here, one hundred there, to cut wood, to build new camps, to work on the roads. The new camps have no names. Just the camp at Sam Teu, at Tham Ting, At Muong Soy, at Pa Hang, at Lao Houng. Lao Houng was the first of these camps. Lao Houng was the village that had been used by Prime Minister Kaisone of the Lao Communist Party as headquarters for attacking the country of Laos. He lived there before 1975 and was against the Royal Government of the Kingdom of Laos. The seminarists were contracted out to work at Lao Houng. My friend Samly Khamphouy was there. The old camp sites are not used for seminars any more. The Phathet Lao still use Camp 03 as their headquarters and the prisoners who are sick go there. That is all. I was more fortunate than the six hundred who remain. When we were collected together in Camp 03, they called a list of names. These people were to go to Vientaine---free. There were twenty-five of us. Our families had brought our freedom. My wife had paid three bars of gold to get me out--about seven or eight hundred dollars. It was the money we had saved when we were still working. She sold her jewelry too. Some paid more than this. When I reached Vientaine, I took my wife and five of my children and fled across the Mekong River. And now I am safe. But I will always remember the six hundred I left behind, Hidden to the People of the World. Haak Paang, Douang