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Slowly It Awakens: Laos Teeters on the Edge of Change |
| Section: CULTURE / CROSSROADS |
| Author: Ben Barber |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 2/1/1998 |
| Size: 2,379 Words, 14,262 Characters |
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Saeng Kue, 43, walks through the Laotian capital without concern. He is one of 125,000 Laotian Hmong refugees who fled to America after the communist victory in 1975. These days he periodically returns to his homeland for business trips. Two decades ago he fled Laos in terror, escaping war and communist repression by riding in an American plane as it bombed the enemy below. Like many Hmong Americans, Kue feared to return to Laos, but he swallowed those fears. "I was nervous," he admits, with sardonic understatement, "during my first return trip in 1991."
Traveling around the country, he had to register with the police in many towns, and some of his relatives were afraid to have him come to their homes. All that has relaxed in recent years. Since this June, Americans don't even need to a...
. . .
...ies. But Laotians are not necessarily looking to others for the solution to their problems. One Hmong professional in Vientiane says the only way to improve life for his hill tribe and the country is to improve education and create a single nation by getting everyone to learn the same language. "We want to improve our condition," he says. "We love this country, and we will live here forever."
(806 of 14,262 characters)
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