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Ethnic Minorities and National Building in Laos:
The Hmong in the Lao State
(School
of Behavioural Sciences, Macquarie University, North Ryde,
Australia.
Published in: Peninsule , No.11/12, 1985/86,
pp.215-232)
Contents
1
Acknowledgement
2
Discussion
3
References
Acknowledgement: I am grateful for financial
assistance from the American Social Science Research Council
(Indochinese Studies Program), New York, and for the support of Dr.
Timothy Dunnigan, Department of Anthropology, University of
Minnesota, USA, and his collaboration with this research project.
This paper is an attempt to reconstruct Hmong history in Laos from
the perspective of the leaders and their involvement in Lao politic
or their participation in the shaping of the Lao nation. It is based
on data collected from a year of field interviews and supplemented
with written sources in Hmong, Lao, French and English. Some of the
chronological events related here are already familiar with many
readers, but others are hopefully new. As this is a very brief
overview, it only touches on the essential and thus many other
actors or facts have to be unfortunately
omitted. A more detailed account will be made available at a later
date.
Discussion
At the beginning, they had only
the words of the Chinese trader who twice returned from the South
and talked of a vast expanse of land covered in virgin forests and
stalked by wild animals. Few people lived on this southern land as
it was inhabited by fierce tigers, wild elephants and rhinoceros.
This sounded indeed like a land of golden opportunities, a land
dreamed of by all Hmong and so many times mentioned in their
legendary stories. On the traders' third trip to the South, the
Hmong sent their own messengers with him, and again they came back
with the same glowing account of this southern country known as "Niag
Moos" or the Mother State.
Southwards the Hmong migrated,
hoping there were no other people going ahead of them. They were not
sure whether the exhausted grassland they left behind was in Yunnan
or Tonkin, because in these northern parts the Chinese were then the
rulers everywhere but they did not know who ruled in this land in
the South into which they were now moving. The first group to arrive
on this migration to Nong Het, in North-eastern Laos, was the Green
Hmong. They were soon followed by two groups of White Hmong. The
newcomers settled on mountain tops and began clearing their first
swiddens out of the choicest virgin forests around their villages.
On a fine day in the middle of
the dry season, the Lao farmers living in the lowlands nearest to
the Hmong looked up to the highlands. They saw nothing but thick
smoke burning out of green jungles. This was indeed most unusual,
for in all their lives these impenetrable forests had never given up
so much grey and black smoke for weeks on end. Perhaps, the evil
jungle spirits were angry and were burning up the hills? As quickly
as the Lao villagers could run, they reported the strange sighting
to their local overlord who sent a few of his best men up the
mountains for a closer inspection. Cutting their way through
uncharted terrain, they reached where the smoke come from. They
discovered that patches upon patches of virgin forests had been
cleared, left to dry and then were burned. Yet no one seamed to be
in sight.
After much searching, they then
found what appeared to be a human settlement perched on a mountain
ridge. This was, however, no ordinary Lao village, for all the
houses were built on dirt floor instead of on stilts. When the Lao
approached the village, all the inhabitants took to the jungle with
their children and possessions on the back. These people must be
savages, indeed. Otherwise, why would they flee at the sight of
other human beings? And look at the spoons and bowls on the kitchen
shelves: they were all carved from wood. These foreigners must be
really primitive, for no Lao would use wooden kitchen utensils. The
country had probably been invaded again, but this time not by the
usual Vietnamese from the East who always come with armed troops.
The King of Xieng Khouang, in
whose domain the events took place, was informed in haste. Instead
of being concerned, the King merely said to the emissaries from the
Lord of Muong Kham who controlled the Nong Het area: "Return to your
master, and tell him not be alarmed. These forest people are none
other than my own subjects. If they prefer living in the highlands,
let them be. We will pay them our own visit when the time is
appropriate". The King soon sent one of his representatives to see
the Hmong, and demanded that they paid taxes in return for
permission to live in the hills of the northern State.
Not long after their discovery
by the Lao, the Hmong settlers found that they were not living alone
in the highlands. There were Khmu lower down the slopes, the
aboriginal race who were pushed up the hills by the incoming Lao
many centuries before. At first, when the Hmong were still only a
few families they were tolerated, but once their number increased
they were soon in conflict with the slope dwellers over land use.
The Khmu claimed to possess much of the upland forests and did not
want the Hmong to clear them for farming. Many Khmu had also become
addicted to Hmong opium and many were reduced to working for the
Hmong or Lao in the lowlands. Resentment soon turned into hostility,
and finally armed clashes (Larteguy and Yang, 1979:85). Using
flintlocks, the Hmong had a stronger firepower over the Khmu's
spears and arrows. They also had much longer war experiences with
their centuries of resistance against invaders in China. These
skirmishes were to play an important role in subsequent
relationships between these two hill minorities. Many Khmu moved to
Luang Prabang province and later joined the communist Pathet Lao
(PL) against the many highland Hmong on the side of the Royal Lao
Government (RLG). Those who remained in Xieng-Khouang came to
identify with other groups as underdogs of the French colonial
authorities and lowland Lao overlords, and tended to unite with the
Hmong in their common political struggles.
By the time Laos became a
French protectorate in 1893, the Hmong had settled in greater number
in Laos and could be found not only in Xieng Kouang, but also in
Sameua, Luang Prabang and Phong Saly provinces. The system of Hmong
paying tax to lowland Lao had been well established. Not only was
tax paid in the form of two silver coins per households, but those
Hmong chiefs who were given village or clan leadership by the Lao
such as the Kiatong, the Xophia, the Photong also had to pay
occasional tribute with the product of their hunting and gathering:
elephant tusks, rhinoceros horns, deer meats, etc. without counting
a few kilograms of opium (Yang Dao, 1975:45). The French had only to
maintain this tax system. Because the tax was now paid to the French
through local Lao mandarins, the latter were deprived of their
traditional source of incomes from the highlander. They in turn
illegally levied their on tax.
Finding themselves now
paying double tax without any consultation, the 3 Kiatong Hmong in
the Nong Het areas organised an ambush against tax collector and the
few guards who accompanied them in 1896 at Ban Khang Phanieng in
Muong Kham, Xieng Khouang province (Yang Dao, op.cit.: 46).
Following subsequent negotiations with the French, the first Hmong
tasseng (canton administrator) was established and given to the
chief negotiator, Kiatong Muas Zoov Kaim. Another tasseng was also
created near Xieng Khouang town with Zam Yaj Hawj assuming the
tittle in 1940. Under the new arrangement, all Hmong leader were to
collect taxes from their own people and would have their own
autonomy with Hmong village administration, bypassing Lao officials
at the Tasseng and Muong levels (Savina, 1924:238). This was to
affect greatly later political events in Laos, for it gave the Hmong
leadership a tendency to prefer dealing directly with Western allies
(be them French or Americans) instead of the Lao, primarily because
of a basic distrust of Lao authorities based on these early
administrative conflicts.
The Pa Chay (Batchai) revolt
against the French from 1918 to 1921 only served to strengthen the
bond between the pro-French Hmong leaders and their colonial
masters. Pa Chay Vue, an orphan, was brought up by on uncle but
after his marriage and the birth of his first child he claimed to be
called on by god to teach the Hmong to live in good health and
harmony with their environment (Yaj Xooj Tsawb, 1984; 29-31). his
mission did not extend to the declaration of war against the Black
Thai in Northwest Vietnam where the rebellion first took place.
Nevertheless, Pa Chay was urged to lead the Hmong against oppressive
lowland mandarins by his uncle after the latter saw him transform a
cotton ball into on exploding grenade at a New Year gathering. At
the time, the Hmong were regularly recruited to work as coolies for
Black Thai officials, in addition to tax or tributes requisitioned
from them. Eventually, the French in Tonkin were told that Pa Chay
was stirring up Hmong for an uprising. In January 1918, troops were
dispatched to fire at Pa Chay's followers, thus starting the four-
year conflict which spread into Lao when the Hmong leader took
refuge there after two years of cat-and-mouse war games with the
French in Vietnam.
At its peak, the rebellion
covered a territory of 40.000 square kilometres, spanning from Dien
Bien Phu in Tonkin to Nam Ou in Luang Prabang, Laos, down south to
Muong Cha north of Vientiane, and going north-east to Sam Neua. Many
Hmong took up arms in collaboration with Pa Chay either out of their
own personal grievances against lowlanders or in the belief that
they were part of a holy war foretold in many of their myths. In
China, the Hmong had staged many such bloody uprisings through the
centuries against Chinese domination based on a belief in the coming
of o mythical king (Tupp, 1982: 114-127). The Pa Chay war was
originally brought on by discontent with Thai leaders, but it was
soon turned against the French when the latter set many of its
colonial soldiers on the trail of the Hmong rebels. As stated by
Gunn (1986: 115), the largest military expedition ever organised in
Laos "by that date was mounted to break Batchai's rebellion; four
companies of tirailleurs were brought in from other parts of
Indochina to restore order."
Following the pattern of
conflicts between the Hmong and the Khmu established at the
beginning of their settlement in Laos, it was the Khmu who in the
end killed Pa Chay in his hide-out in Muong Heup, Luang Prabang, on
17 November 1921 (Le Boulanger, 1969: 360). By this time, many Hmong
has surrendered, owing to French military might and mercilles
suppression. Of those who co-operated with the rebels, the leaders
were decapitated at Nong Het in front of hundreds of Hmong
spectators forcibly assembled there by the French. Many of the old
Hmong told me of this story when I did my research in 1985 still
remember being compelled to watch French swords descending on the
neck of these Pa Chay prisoners, when they were only children
clinging to the arms of their parents. Those who were not leaders of
the revolt had to pay compensation to the French at fifty piastres
"for every Lao or Vietnamese killed, not including compensation for
loos of house, cattle and crops" (Gunn, op cit.: 120) . Altogether,
375 kilograms of silver bars and coins were collected from the
Hmong. Many who could not pay had to sell or pawn their children and
possessions.
The French were not the only
ones benefiting financially from the rebellion. Lo Blia Yao, who
helped the French put down the revolt in Nong Het also gained
incredible wealth acting as collector of these war compensations.
The cattle given to him as Kiatong filled a valley which took three
hours to walk though, and the money he amassed filled a metal trunk
which two strong men could not lift. It is this wealth resulting
from the Pa Chay war which eventually brought an end to the control
of Hmong leadership by his family in Nong Het. Lo Blia Yao's
oldest son was granted the
office of canton chief or Tasseng by the French, but Chong Tou
neglected his duties and preferred dissipating his father's money
and cattle through gambling with local Chinese and Vietnamese
traders. In the beginning, Kiatong Lo Blia Yao's son-in-law and
secretary, Lyfoung, had sent three of his sons to study in Xieng
Khouang town, followed by secondary studies in Hanoi and South
Vietnam.
In 1939, the eldest of
Lyfoung's educated sons, Touby returned to Nong Het, the only Hmong
who could speak and think as a French. The previous year, Chong Tou
had just lost his Tasseng title to Lyfoung, but the latter died
after a few months in office. The French soon engineered an election
for a new Tasseng. Although one of Lo Blia Yao's sons, Fay Dang, did
contest the election with Touby, the latter won (Lee, 1982 200-201).
Fay Dang and his family appealed many times unsuccessfully to the
local Lao administrator in Muong Kham, and the French Commissar in
Xieng Khouang. As a last resort, Fay Dang took the long journey to
Luang Prabang to ask Prince Phetsarath, the Viceroy, to intervene so
that political power in Nong Het could be kept within the Lo clan
(Castle, 1979: 53). Phetsarath assured Fay Dang of this support, and
was presented a treasured rhinoceros horn. However, the Viceroy was
apparently too preoccupied with his Lao Issara (Free Lao) movement
against French domination of Laos to have paid much attention to the
grievances of a distant minor Hmong leader.
On 9 March 1945,
Japanese troops occupied Laos and systematically attacked all French
military and civilian strongholds. Many local resistance French
officers took refuge with the Hmong who hid them in their mountain
fortress. Fay Dang sided with the Japanese; and soon after Touby was
arrested for his past collaboration with the French. Touby escaped
to hide with French officers in the forests near Phu Son, in Muong
Kham, from where he directed Hmong militia units to carry out French
resistance. Vang Pao, the first Hmong to become a general in the
Royal Lao Army (RLA), served in the guerrilla units, set up by
French Para commandos, Bichelot and Gauthier, during their period of
hiding from the Japanese. With the Japanese capitulation on 15,
August 1945, Fay Dang found himself without support, while Touby
still had his French Para commandos and his militia to protect him.
The French re-occupied Laos in
September 1945 with the co-operation of French parachutists and
local partisans (Thompson and Adloff, 1955: 99-201). However, Xieng
Kouang town remained in the hands of the Lao Issara who took it over
in November 1945. With Hmong militia under Touby and Lao forces
under Tiao Saykhan, Xieng Khouang was taken back for the French on
26 January 1946 (Gunn, 1985: 248). Tiao Saykham was a member of the
Xieng Khouang royal family who was a class mate of Touby and was
hiding with the latter during the Japanese occupation. With the
Japanese gone, the French now found themselves confronting a new and
much craftier enemy, the Vietminh or anti-French Vietnamese
guerrilla units under the control of Ho Chi Minh. The Vietminh had
not only infiltrated North Vietnam, but also North-eastern Laos even
before the Japanese surrender.
Touby's Hmong militia were able
to repel some of these Vietminh attacks in the Nong Het areas. For
this reason and for his pro-French stand, he was asked by General
Salan, Commander-in- chief of the French Expeditionary Forces in
Indochina, to organise more Hmong to resist the Vietnamese advance.
The French imposed a new opium tax on all Hmong to be collected by
Touby. This opium would be used to finance a thousand of "armed men
in the field" and was to be dispense of through the French mixed
airborne Commando troop in South Vietnam (Gunn, op. cit. 244).
In return for his service to
the French, Touby was appointed to the position of Chao Muong or
County Governor for the Hmong of Xieng Khouang in September 1946 by
King Sisavang Vong of Luang Prabang. This was the highest office a
Hmong had reached at that time, and was largely the result of strong
lobby by Raynond, the Commissioner of the French Republic in Laos
(Ibid.: 240 and 242). Tiao Saykham was made Provincial Governor or
Chao Khoueng. A harmonious relationship between the Lao and Hmong
ensued in the province, and Tiao Saykham continued to collaborate
with Hmong leaders on the RLG side until the PL won the day in 1975.
Against this background, Fay
Dang Lo and his supporters were driven into North Vietnam by Touby's
militia. There, they are said to have made contact with the Vietminh
for the first time (McCoy, 1972: 85). With political indoctrination
and arm support, Fay Dang was able to recruit Hmong members for his
Resistance League, due also in part to the oppressive opium tax
Touby had to administer for the French. Fay Dang probably made
contact with Lao Issara leaders such as Nouhak and Kaysone during
this time but might not have met Souphonouvong until the latter
joined them from Thailand in Vietnam in 1949. At that stage, these
anti-French dissidents were already well trained by the Vietminh,
and some had even become Communist (Deuve, 1984: 31). A people's
congress in August l950 resulted in the formation of the Neo Lao
Issara or Free Lao Front and a resistance government in which Fay
Dang become one of the two ministers without portfolio representing
ethnic minorities (the other being Sithon Kommadan, the Lao Theung
leader).
Despite this modest
beginning, Fay Dang's Hmong and Sithon's Khmu were the grass roots
movers in the progress of the Free Lao Front in Northern Laos. As
mentioned by Deuve (op.cit.: 36), the Front had to operate initially
in isolated ethnic enclaves, inaccessible frontiers untouched by the
Royal Lao Government (RLG) in Vientiane. By 1956, the Front had
gained sufficient popular support in the countryside to be changed
to the Neo Lao Hak Sat (NLHS) or Patriotic Front. Fay Dang was made
vice-president of the new organisation. When the NLHS and the RLG
decided on a coalition government in 1958, one of Fay Dang's
relative, Lo Foung, was elected to the National Assembly while Touby
represented the Hmong on the RLG side.
For a time, there was great
hope that the two Hmong groups would live in peace with many other
previously antagonistic Lao groups. However, this was not to be the
case. Two months after the elections, the Coalition Government under
Souvanna Phouma collapsed, and a rightist government under Phoui
Sananakone was instituted. By July l959, most NLHS leaders in
Vientiane had been arrested by the new government. Fay Dang, who was
in Xieng Khouang, once again fled to Vietnam after the NLHS and the
Neutralists took Xieng Khouang in 1961, he returned to live in Nong
Het where he remained until 1975.
Although Fay Dang had been with
the NLHS from the beginning and his Hmong followers had died in
their thousands for the Pathet Lao (PL) cause, he did not get a post
in the Cabinet of the new Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR).
He and Sithon were offered the ceremonial positions of
vice-president in the People's Supreme Assembly, and were not even
members of the new Lao People's Revolutionary Party Central
Committee "where real power lies" Everingham, 1977: 27). In the last
few years of his life, Fay Dang returned to line as a farmer in his
native Nong Het under the watchful eyes of PL guards. Old and
ailing, he died in 1986, but his death was not even announced
officially until three months later.
Touby, unlike his cousin and
arch enemy Fay Dang, died a lonely death in a re-education camp in
Sam Neua in 1978. It was said that he had to dig his own grave
before being executed by PL soldiers for allegedly attempting to
arouse camp internees to mutiny. Following his election to the
National Assembly in 1958, he became Minister of Social Welfare in
1960 before joining the King's Council as an advisor on minority
affairs, a post he held until the cease-fire between the NLHS and
the RLG in 1973. In the Provisional Government of National Union
formed in April 1974, Touby was given the position of Deputy
Minister of Post and Telecommunications before being taken away in
1975 to Sam Neua to grow chillies and to sharpen knives for other
detainees in an attempt to cleanse their capitalist minds with
manual labour.
Apart from Touby and Fay Dang,
the other better known Hmong leader in Laos in probably General Vang
Pao. From village militiaman under Touby, he joined the French
military police, then went as the first Hmong (under much protest
from the Lao) to study at the Military Officers College at Dong Hen
in Southern Laos where the instructors were still French in 1951.
After graduating, he served for many years under Lao commanders in
the Royal Lao Army in Xieng Khouang. By l959, he had been promoted
to the rank of major with soldiers of all ethnic backgrounds under
his command. He was later made Commander of the Second Military
Region in Northern Laos, and became a general in 1964.
In the view of some Western
writers (McCoy, op. cit.: 268-81; and Deuve, op.cit. 255), Vang Pao
was no more than a warmonger and opium broker for the CIA, or the
commander of a Hmong mercenary army carrying out its own "secret
war" in Laos independently of the RLG. For many other more informed
people, however, he symbolised the hopes, not only of the Hmong but
also other minorities in Laos in the region under his control, he
set up schools for the highlanders, paid the teachers when money was
not forthcoming from the government, and organised nurse education
through the US Agency for International Development (Garret, 1974:
78-111). He built dormitories for minority students in Vientiane so
that they could pursue higher education in the capital. More
importantly, he ensured that hill minorities were represented in the
provincial public Service and in the National Assembly (with 3 Hmong
and 1 Khmu members). One of the two radio stations with minority
languages at the time operated from his headquarters in Long Cheng.
In many ways, the highlands
minorities had attained a new level of political participation and a
new identity under Vang Pao. He arranged regular visits by leaders
of the royal families of Luang Prabang and Champassak, by Buddhist
monks and the Lao elite. He insisted that the Lao shared key
positions in civilian or military administration so that in all this
endeavour he was assisted by many Lao army officers and troop, as
well as minority and Lao public servants. Although nine out of the
fourteen battalions under his command were made up of special Forces
paid for by the CIA, these forces were always considered part of the
regular army; they were special in so far as the RLG could not train
and pay for their upkeep. It was only some people in the West who
referred the Hmong as "mercenaries" in the soil of their very own
country. So much for helping their Western allies fight against
Communism!
Along with many other Lao
right-wing leaders, Vang Pao had to escape from Laos after 1975. He
was one among four condemned to death in absentia by the new PDRL.
Since his exile in the West, he has organised with a numbers of Lao
leaders a resistance movement which includes members of all
minorities from Laos. He is by all accounts one of the most active
in this new political activity designed, in his view, not only to
regain Laos but also to structure Lao politics in such a way that
all ethnic groups would have an equal part to play in a new regime
so that contribution to national building could be made by all at
every level. Many Lao refugees, including those from the lowlands,
have come to put their hopes and dreams in his efforts along with
those of other resistance leaders.
To conclude this short
exposition of Hmong political participation in Laos, let me say that
I have not tried to put my account in any analytical framework,
because our knowledge on the subject is still too rudimentary for
synthesis or interpretation. I merely wish to share what emerge from
my research in the hope that a better appreciation can be made of
the role of the Hmong played in Lao recent history. During the civil
war from 1961 to 1974, it is estimated that close to 15,000 Hmong
died in the battle fields serving the Royal Lao Government. On the
PL side, it is difficult to know how many of them had perished, but
its Hmong commanders such as Thao Tou Saychou and General Praseut
had paid with their own lives. The toll was heavy for the military;
and the costs were even more hefty for Hmong civilians, especially
on the RLG side when more than 150,000 Hmong had been uprooted from
their own country and are now living as refugee in different parts
of the world.
Considering that there was
about 300,000 of them in Laos before 1975, the price the Hmong paid
in their contribution to the building of the Lao nation has been
particularly high in comparison of other groups.
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