Vang Pao Case Highlights Hmong Communitys Losses

FRESNO, Calif.--The news on June 4 came as a shock to hundreds of Hmong in Californias Central Valley. Ten Hmong men from California had been arrested for allegedly attempting to purchase arms to overthrow the Lao government. Among these men was Vang Pao--a former general in the Laotian army and a Hmong war hero during the Secret War.

While the Vietnam War raged through Southeast Asia in the 1960s, the CIA recruited thousands of men from the Hmong hill tribes to battle communist forces in a covert guerrilla action that came to be called the Secret War. They were trained to collect intelligence, rescue downed American pilots, and sever the delivery of supplies along the Ho Chi Minh trail. More than 30,000 Hmong casualties resulted, along with continued genocidal attacks, leading to a huge exodus of refugees into Thailand. Hundreds of thousands of those refugees were resettled in the United States.

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Here in Fresno, conversation among the Hmong community focuses on the recent arrests, and the history behind them. “It was our country, our land,” said one 46-year-old man who remained so fearful that he did not want to be identified by name. “And to think of all those in Laos today who are still dying because of that secret war that would have never started if the Americans didn’t come into our country…America is afraid to admit what is happening in Laos today because of that past.”

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