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This year with a sort of personal New Years Resolution,
inspired by http://writingaspirations.blogspot.com
. I decided that I would read a book by a debut author. I had a bit of a
challenge FINDING a book that had debuted in 2006, since I do in fact live on
the far ends of the earth. My first choice
was Paul Rusesabagina’s biography, An Ordinary Man: The True Story Behind
'Hotel Rwanda', but I couldn’t actually find that in a nearby bookstore.
But I did have some luck in the Singapore airport when I saw a copy
of Nightmare in Laos: The True Story of a Woman Imprisoned in a Communist
Gulag by Kay Danes. This book was published in July 2006 by Maverick House.
Her memoir has special appeal to me because I live in Laos, in the city
in which Danes was arrested and imprisoned. I think the foreign community in Laos has a
false sense of security. Most of us feel that if “something happens”, “something”
being the government finding us guilty of breaking a national law, the only
punishment would be expulsion from the country. Kay Danes and her husband Kerry,
though Australian citizens, were not given any liberties when the Lao government
charged their Security Company with stealing over one ton of raw sapphires.
The crime sounds very severe, but the problem was that Kerry
and Kay Danes had nothing to do with the missing sapphires. Their company
provided security services to the foreign owned gem mining company. The Gem
Mining Company fell under the eye of the Lao government, and the foreign owners
fled to Bangkok.
Whether the Lao government actually believed that the Danes were involved with
the “crime”, or only hoped that by arresting them they could lure the AWOL
Mining company owners back onto Lao soil, the world will never know.
The Danes endured 11 months of imprisonment in very primitive
conditions. All the while they were being harassed and sometimes physically
abused by the government who wanted them to sign confessions of guilt for
crimes they didn’t commit. In Laos
all prisoners are assumed to be guilty, and usually the “trial” is just a
public forum for announcing the guilty verdict that has been determined long in
advance.
Through reading about the Danes and their terrible ordeal, I
had insight into how the Lao culture played a big role in their story. The
whole problem seemingly started with one official who seemed to think he could
intimidate the Danes into giving him bribes. When he didn’t receive any bribes,
he only invented larger and more impossible circumstances to leave the Danes at
his mercy. If the official had “given up” or “let it go” he would have loss
face in the eyes of his colleagues. As it were, the Danes case got bigger and
bigger until the Australian government was forced to get involved on their
behalf. Rather than one man losing face, the entire Lao government stood to
lose face. Everything spiraled out of control, and I see the instigator as the
one to blame.
This book was well written and I’m glad I came across it. I
am inspired to try to contact Kay Danes to learn how I can help the prisoners
who remain in Phontong Prison, which is near to my home. It is sad that a
country who receives so much aid from the developed world still tops the list
for human rights abuses. I feel that all I can do as an individual is to offer
help to the victims.
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