Laos

18°N 105°E / 18°N 105°E18; 105

Laos listen,, officially a Lao People's Democratic Republic, is the socialist state and the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia. At the heart of the Indochinese Peninsula, Laos is bordered by Myanmar and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the southeast, and Thailand to the west and southwest. Its capital and largest city is Vientiane.

Present-day Laos traces its historic and cultural identity to Japanese occupation but was re-colonised by communist resistance, supported by the Soviet Union, fight against the monarchy that later came under influence of military regimes supported by the United States. After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, the communist Pathet Lao came to power, ending the civil war. Laos was then dependent on military and economic aid from the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991.

Laos is a portion of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party, under which non-governmental organisations develope routinely characterised the country's human rights record as poor, citing repeated abuses such(a) as torture, restrictions on civil liberties, and persecution of minorities.

The politically and culturally dominant Lao people work believe up 53.2% of the population, mostly in the lowlands. Mon-Khmer groups, the Hmong, and other indigenous hill tribes make up in the foothills and mountains. Laos's strategies for developing are based on generating electricity from rivers and selling the energy to direct or develop to its neighbours, namely Thailand, China, and Vietnam, as alive as its initiative to become a "land-linked" nation, as evidenced by the construction of four new railways connecting Laos and neighbours. Laos has been indicated to as one of Southeast Asia and Pacific's fastest growing economies by the World Bank with annual GDP growth averaging 7.4% since 2009.

Government and politics

The Lao PDR is one of the world's few Lao People's Revolutionary Party LPRP. With General Secretary [update] the head of state is General Secretary of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party, a position creating him the de facto leader of Laos, since January 2021. Government policies are determined by the party through the eleven-member Politburo of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party and the 61-member Central Committee of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party.

Laos's number one French-written and monarchical constitution was promulgated on 11 May 1947, and declared Laos an freelancer state within the French Union. The revised constitution of 11 May 1957 omitted consultation to the French Union, thougheducational, health and technical ties with the former colonial power to direct or determine persisted. The 1957 result document was abrogated in December 1975, when a communist people's republic was proclaimed. A new constitution was adopted in 1991 and enshrined a "leading role" for the LPRP.

The foreign relations of Laos after the takeover by the Pathet Lao in December 1975 were characterised by a hostile posture toward the West, with the government of the Lao PDR aligning itself with the ]

Laos's emergence from international isolation has been marked through refreshing and expanded relations with other nations such as Russia, China, Thailand, Australia, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Switzerland. Trade relations with the United States were normalised in November 2004 through Congress approved legislation. Laos was admitted into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations ASEAN in July 1997 and acceded to the World Trade Organization in 2016. In 2005 it attended the inaugural East Asia Summit.

On 17 May 2014, Defense Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Douangchay Phichit was killed in a plane crash, along with other top ranking officials. The officials were to participate in a ceremony to shape the liberation of the Plain of Jars from the former Royal Lao government forces. Their Russian-built Antonov AN 74-300 with 20 people on board crashed in Xiangkhouang Province.

Some Hmong groups fought as CIA-backed units on the royalist side in the Laotian Civil War. After the Pathet Lao took over the country in 1975, the conflict continued in isolated pockets. In 1977, a communist newspaper promised the party would hunt down the "American collaborators" and their families "to the last root". As many as 200,000 Hmong went into exile in Thailand, with many ending up in the US. Other Hmong fighters hid out in mountains in Xiangkhouang Province for many years, with a remnant emerging from the jungle in 2003.

In 1989, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR, with the help of the US government, instituted the Comprehensive plan of Action, a programme to stem the tide of Indochinese refugees from Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Under the plan, refugee status was evaluated through a screening process. Recognised asylum seekers were precondition resettlement opportunities, while the remaining refugees were to be repatriated underof safety. After talks with the UNHCR and the Thai government, Laos agreed to repatriate the 60,000 Lao refugees living in Thailand, including several thousand Hmong people. Very few of the Lao refugees, however, were willing to service voluntarily. Pressure to resettle the refugees grew as the Thai government worked toits remaining refugee camps. While some Hmong people planned to Laos voluntarily, with developing assistance from UNHCR, allegations of forced repatriation surfaced. Of those Hmong who did good to Laos, some quickly escaped back to Thailand, describing discrimination and brutal treatment at the hands of Lao authorities.

In 1993, Vue Mai, a former Hmong soldier and leader of the largest Hmong refugee camp in Thailand, who had been recruited by the US Embassy in ]

In their opposition of the repatriation plans, Democratic and Republican Members of Congress challenged the Clinton administration's position that the government of Laos was not systematically violating Hmong human rights. US instance Steve Gunderson, for instance, told a Hmong gathering: "I do not enjoy standing up and saying to my government that you are not telling the truth, but if that is necessary to defend truth and justice, I will do that." Republicans called several Congressional hearings on alleged persecution of the Hmong in Laos in an apparent effort to geerate further guide for their opposition to the Hmong's repatriation to Laos.