9 April 2021

New reports of Lao military operations against ethnic Hmong communities suggest the government is tightening its control over areas targeted for development and investment.

According to a Radio Free Asia report on April 1, Lao military forces have repeatedly attacked Hmong living around Phou Bia mountain in Xaysomboun province, north of Vientiane. Local sources and civil society advocates say the military campaign is an attempt to push the Hmong out to ensure that foreign investment projects and other government-backed initiatives can proceed unimpeded.

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“This escalation of violence coincides with a push towards the development of Phou Bia Mountain as both a tourist site and an area of interest to foreign investment,” a UNPO official told Radio Free Asia. “The government continues to deny any wrongdoing and refuses access by international observers, even on humanitarian or medical grounds.”

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This “land into capital” policy now centers on initiatives like the US$6 billion China-Laos railway and a string of 12 economic zones connected by the railway and other corridors under China’s Belt and Road Initiative. As Laos seeks to secure these plans and prepare upland areas for economic integration, the government is ramping up efforts to assert active control of ethnic minority communities.

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In a statement in August 2020, the UNPO wrote that the Chinese Communist Party is “exporting repressive policies beyond its borders, leading client states…to undertake extreme repression against their national minorities as an indirect result of massive Chinese investment as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.”

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