"Lao Land Protest Villagers Held in Failing Health", 02 November 2017

Fourteen villagers in Laos’s Sekong province jailed since July for cutting down rubber trees on farm land claimed by a Vietnamese company are being held incommunicado, with some in failing healt….

“They appeared to have serious health problems,” the source said. “Their bodies were swollen, and they were being held in separate cells.”

Residents of Yeub village in Sekong’s Thateng district have been fighting since 2006 for alternative land and additional compensation since the government granted their land to Vietnamese rubber company Cong Ty Cao Su Nghi Lao-Viet (LVF) in what is believed to have been a 50-year concession.

Much of Laos’s economic growth is generated through land concessions for natural resources, including timber, agricultural products, minerals, and energy, even though these come at a cost for those who lose their land and may not receive proper compensation or adequate replacement farmland.

Land grabs and the appropriation of public property to turn over to foreign and domestic companies are commonplace in Laos….