Uncivil Suppression

This story was originally published by Asia Democracy Chronicles. Photo caption: Laotian development worker Sombath Somphone, seen here posing for a 2006 picture with Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu, remains missing to this day after he was abducted in the Laotian capital of Vientiane in 2012.  (Credit Wikicommons via Asia Democracy Chronicles / Shui Meng Ng)

Since the mid-2000s, international donors have focused on the development of a civil society in Laos, one of two communist countries in Southeast Asia. Civil society actors in Laos are wide-ranging, from international NGOS to community-based organizations.

But most are active in the field of poverty reduction, as the landlocked nation is meant to completely exit from the list of least developed countries in 2026. 

Yet since 2018, civic space in Laos has been rated as “closed” by CIVICUS, a South Africa-based organization that works to strengthen citizen action and civil society around the world. 

The rating is largely because of Decree No. 238, enacted in November 2017 and which bestows the government with extensive authority to regulate the establishment of asso

ciations, oversee and restrict their operations and financial matters, and disband them without recourse based on discretionary reasons.

Moreover, under the Decree’s section 12 and Articles 31, 48, and 77, the state retains the right to criminally prosecute “non-state” associations or their individual members if they violate any terms of the decree. 

Put simply, the state has civil society in Laos on a leash. Lamthan, who has been in the NGO sector for the last decade, says, “Registered organizations seek approval not only for each and every project, but also for every single activity. We can’t go beyond what is agreed.”

This is despite the fact that Laos has been a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights since 2009. Article 44 of the Lao Constitution also states: “Lao citizens have the right and freedom of speech, press and assembly; and have the right to set up associations and to stage demonstrations which are not contrary to the laws.”

Article 221 of the Penal Code stipulates punitive measures against violation of the Freedom of Speech and Assembly, saying, “Any person violating an individual’s freedom to engage in lawful speech, writing, gathering, participation at meetings and other freedoms shall be sentenced to imprisonment for a term ranging from one year to three years or by re-education without deprivation of liberty and a fine shall be imposed ranging from 5,000,000 kip to 20,000,000 kip.” (At current exchange rates, one U.S. dollar is equivalent to 20,079 kip.)

Decree No. 238 arguably goes against all these. Yet complicating matters all the more is that in Laos, laws and regulations are usually vague and subject to interpretation and implementation by local authorities.

Perpetual guessing game

Like the rest of the people in Laos, those working in the non-profit sector have little choice but to do a lot of guesswork. Lamthan says, “We have to depend on our gut feelings as to what kind of limitations there might be.”

The result is a constant air of wariness hanging over Laos’s civil society. Indeed, members of the NGO community in the country tend to be very careful not only of their actions and interactions with officials and the people they are trying to help, but also of the words that come out of their mouths. 

Jimmy, an NGO worker like Lamthan, cites an example: “We cannot say the phrase ‘human rights’.”  

Lamthan agrees, saying that in Laos, human rights concepts have to be framed in terms of development. “For example,” says the NGO veteran, “we can’t say ‘right to housing,’ but say ‘livelihood improvement’.”

It is also telling that the insiders in Laos’s fragile civil society interviewed for this story all requested pseudonyms for fear of reprisals. Only Anne-Sophie Gindroz has agreed to be named, but then she is neither part of the country’s NGO community nor in Laos anymore, and unlikely to visit it anytime soon. 

In 2012, the government declared her persona non grata. Then the country director of the Swiss nonprofit Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation in Vientiane, Gindroz was ordered to leave Laos within 48 hours after she wrote a personal letter to the country’s development partners. Lao authorities had somehow gotten wind of the letter, in which Gindroz commented on the government’s “strategy of imposing silence” that impinged on media freedom and the rule of law. 

A week after Gindroz’s expulsion, Sombath Somphone, an internationally acclaimed community worker and highly respected in the Laotian civil society, was taken by police. No information about him has since been released; most observers presume he was forcibly disappeared, although Lao authorities have reportedly denied they had anything to do with whatever had happened to him.

Sombath was Gindroz’s friend. Motivated by his disappearance, Gindroz wrote The Silent Repression, a book recounting her experiences during her three years (2010-2012) of working in Laos, mainly in the field of rural development. In the preface of the book, which was released in 2017, former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association Maina Kiai notes that he had repeatedly requested to examine the situation in the country, but was turned down thrice. 

For Lamthan, 2012 — the year of Gindroz’s expulsion and Sombath’s disappearance — was the turning point in the nation’s civic space: “Before 2012, people did not know about civil society in Laos.”

It was also in 2012 when the Asia-Europe People’s Forum was held for the first time in Laos, ahead of the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) of heads of states. The Forum helped put the spotlight on NGOs and their work. But that may have also made them more visible to Lao authorities, who may not have been looking forward to a possible rise in the NGOs’ popularity.

Single-party state

The Lao People’s Democratic Republic is governed by the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP), the country’s founding and only party. Article 3 of the Constitution of Laos ensures the party’s complete control over state power through the nine-member Politburo and 49-member Central Committee, both led by revolutionary leaders.

LPRP holds a monopoly over every facet of life in the country with a population of 7.7 million across 50 ethnic groups, including the rubber-stamp national assembly.

Civil society is a relatively new concept in Laos. The Party has four mass organizations to take care of society: the Lao Front for National Construction, the Lao Federation of Trade Unions, the Lao People’s Revolutionary Youth Union, and the Lao Women’s Union.

To authorities, there was no role for the non-government sector to play, until after 1986, when the Lao government embarked on socioeconomic reforms. Known as the New Economic Mechanism, the reforms liberalized the command economy and transformed it into a market-based model. 

A few reputable international NGOs were soon allowed to operate in the country. With its economy the weakest among the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Laos was and still is heavily dependent on foreign aid. 

But the Party apparently had no intention to loosen its rules outside of the economy, a stance it holds to this day. Local organizations, for instance, must obtain Ministry of Foreign Affairs approval to receive foreign funding greater than 500 million kip (US$22,620). Non-profit organizations that receive foreign funding are also subject to taxation. 

Other rules imposed by Lao authorities have greatly diminished many of the people’s rights and freedoms. For example, when Grindoz wrote her letter in 2012, pointing to, among others, the restraints on media, Laos ranked 165th out of 180 countries in that year’s World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders.

As of 2024, it ranked 153rd. 

In its 2024 Freedom in the World report, the U.S.-based global rights monitor Freedom House gave Laos a score of 13 out of 100 – two out of 40 for political rights and 11 out of 60 for civil liberties — earning it a status of “not free.”

In the report’s section on freedom for NGOs, Freedom House observed: “Human rights and pro-democracy activists are at risk of unexplained disappearances or violence, within Laos and abroad. In 2019, Laotian pro-democracy activist Od Sayavong disappeared in Bangkok, where he resided. Also in 2019, Phetphouthon Philachane, a Laotian citizen who demonstrated in front of the Laotian embassy in Bangkok, disappeared after returning to Laos. In April 2023, an unknown individual shot and seriously wounded Anousa ‘Jack’ Luangsuphom, who administers a Facebook page that hosts politically critical discourse, in Vientiane. In May, Laotian human rights activist Bounsuan Kitiyano was shot to death in Thailand.”

Citizens are monitored by the Ministry of Public Security as well. Members of mass organizations also play a role in the sophisticated and secretive country-wide surveillance. 

Ever careful

It’s no wonder then that most NGO workers in Laos are practically tiptoeing as they go about their tasks. Some of them say that even if a project had been approved, local authorities might still renege on their words at any time. 

Jimmy says that his team makes it a point to work only on certain issues in approved areas until told otherwise. He recalls that in 2019, his organization had been busy collecting data in southern Laos when his supervisor “got a phone call from the local authorities in the area.” 

“They tried to warn us not to go to that area again,” Jimmy recounts.

He adds that his boss was told that the area was now under the government’s control. In fact, says Jimmy, the local authorities had arbitrarily confiscated villagers’ land and arrested 17 people who protested against them. “Then I knew that it was no longer safe to go there again,” Jimmy says.

But then there are NGO workers like Wantha, who is with an international non-profit. He says that the key to working with the Laotian government is understanding how local culture works, and especially how local leaders “want to be pleased.” Everything relies on personal connections and negotiation, he says.

“A project’s approval is very much dependent on individual leaders, and not necessarily agencies,” Wantha asserts. “When local leaders ignore meetings, it means something more needs to be done, observed, and found out. Because they need to feel valued,  respected and see benefits when working with us.” 

In Laos, Wantha says, benefits are “for some people,” and not necessarily for the communities.