Party, State and the Control of Information in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic: Secrecy, Falsification and Denial

ABSTRACT

Since taking control of Laos in 1975, the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party and the government of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) have relied heavily on secrecy, denial and information management and control to govern. These tools have been used for presenting the Party and state as united in support of the country’s one-party communist political system and as being the only real political option. This article presents a number of examples of the particular ways the Party and state have done this. The following are discussed: the little-known rift between the “Red Prince” Chao Souphanouvong and Kaysone Phomvihane; conflict between the Lao PDR and Vietnam and China; the anti-Lao PDR insurgency; calls for political change via the “Social Democratic Club” in 1990; unsuccessful student protests for political change in 1999 and 2009; the forced disappearance of Sombath Somphone; and recent attempts to control social media to publicise anti-government viewpoints. Secrecy, falsification and information management and control have important implications, both with regard to conducting research about Laos and in relation to how outsiders tend to analytically frame the study of Party and state.

KEYWORDS:

• Secrecy
• falsification
• information management
• information control
• Laos

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Keith Barney and Simon Creak for their thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this article, and to two anonymous reviewers and Kevin Hewison for their useful comments. Any remaining deficiencies are my own responsibility.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Souphanouvong was the son of Bounkhong, an Ouparat, or vice-king. He studied engineering in France, and later, after returning to Laos, joined the Lao Issala movement in 1945 against the return of French colonial rule. However, he became increasingly sympathetic to the views of Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, and eventually became one of the leading figures in the Vietnam-allied communist Neo Lao Hak Xat (Stuart-Fox 2008, 318–320).

2. For an important attempt to say more about debates, see Yamada (2018).

3. Latsami Khamphoui states they were arrested just three days after his own arrest (personal communication, June 6, 2010).

4. Souphanouvong’s first son, Ariya, was mysteriously murdered in 1967/1968, with some believing that the North Vietnamese killed him because of his support for Chinese communism (Mothana 2011). It has also been reported that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and those under General Vang Pao killed him (Gunn 1992, 96), although this seems less likely to have been the case.

5. Timeline Laos. http://www.timelines.ws/countries/LAOS.HTML, retrieved July 8, 2017.

6. More recently, however, another Souphanouvong son, Douangsavat, was appointed as minister in the prime minister’s office, indicating that not all members of Souphanouvong’s family have been black-listed from high positions (The Nation, July 4, 2007).

7. Sisanan later worked as a Lao expert for China Radio International in Beijing (China People’s Daily, September 29, 2000). He apparently died there in 2004 (Latsami Khamphoui, personal communication, June 6, 2010).

8. The author has a photograph of the two meeting in a Khmer Rouge camp.

9. In closely allied Vietnam, the government has also been struggling to gain control of political content found on the internet (Wilkey 2002; MacLean 2012), with the Vietnam government’s efforts to monitor, regulate and oversee the internet having been referred to as a “Bamboo Firewall” (Wilkey 2002).