One year ago in Vientiane, Laos, Sombath Somphone was detained at a police checkpoint. Security cameras showed him getting out of his vehicle before being driven away in a pickup truck.
That’s the last time he was ever seen, and on Sunday – the one-year anniversary of the 61-year-old’s disappearance – activists gathered at the Lao Embassy in Bangkok in protest, an activity illegal in communist Laos.
Sombath is a prominent community development worker and advocate of building Laos’ civil society.
Sombath’s wife, Ng Shui Meng of Singapore, publicized a letter to her husband Sunday at the gathering, which included 20 people from the Asia-Europe People’s Forum, Mekong Youth Network and Japanese organisations.
“Your leaders, including President Choumaly Sayasone, have promised to make a serious investigation and find the perpetrators who took you,” she wrote. “I can only hope that their promise is true, even though it has been a year and there is no information whatsoever on your whereabouts or your situation.”
Although he was taken by what appeared to be police, the Lao government has stayed silent on the matter, except to blame it on a “personal dispute,” Bangkok Post reported.
Photo: Thomas Wanhoff
