UA Hmong students take stand against genocide

By: Niketa Reed

Posted: 4/18/08

They were the forgotten U.S. allies. Fleeing by the thousands into the jungles in Laos to avoid prosecution, torture and death in the mid '70s, the Hmong people are still believed to be in refuge for aiding the U.S. in the Vietnam War. Much like the letter in their name, the "H" for help has gone silent and largely ignored for more than 30 years.

Awareness of the Hmong genocide is a major focus for the Hmong Student Organization, which is a UA registered student organization that was established in 2003, to support, promote and encourage Hmong students academically, culturally and socially, said HSOA president Pachee Thao.

Controversies in the clash between communist parties and states prelude the Hmong's involvement with the CIA's "Secret Army" during the Vietnam War. This allegedly spurred retaliation from a communist regime in Laos, placed in power after the U.S. pulled out of southeast Asia in 1975, according to footage in the documentary "Hunted Like Animals" by filmmaker Rebecca Sommer. Issues of forced repatriation, from places of refugee like Thailand, remain in question.

"There's a lot of Hmong crisis going on right now that many people aren't aware of, but before they can fully understand the crisis, they need to know who the Hmong are - and the only way they'll know is through our organization," Thao said. "HSOA reopened me to my own culture, which in a sense made me want to open the culture to the public. I felt like I had a duty to perform, and that duty, nonetheless, was to voice the campus and the community that there is a Hmong minority group out there.

"We want to be known, we want to be heard, " Thao said.

The Hmong ethnic group descends from the southeast region of Asia. Today, the Hmong population has migrated heavily to southern provinces in China, parts of northern Vietnam, Thailand, and internationally through the Hmong Diaspora, according to the online Encyclopedia Britannica.

UA senior and HSOA member Stephanie Vang is proud of how much the organization has grown and improved over the years.

"HSOA is the voice and channel for the Hmong students to be heard on campus and northwest Arkansas, and to be part of that is just amazing," Vang said. "Despite little recognition and funding on campus, we've managed to somehow continuously come up with innovative ideas to keep our culture alive and help spread awareness about the Hmong.

"The Hmong community in Arkansas is small, so every Hmong student is usually encouraged by each other to join as a way to connect and socialize with each other and also the UA campus," she said.?

Before the semester ends, the HSOA will hold a "Coins for Change" fundraiser for the Give and Live's Project Brainfood. Funds raised go to needy children in Thailand for food and shelter.

"In Thailand, many poor children get to go to school free, but several are too poor to buy lunch," Vang said. "There have been some cases where children would resort to eating wild poisonous berries and ending up in the hospital just because they can't afford to buy lunch. The sad thing is that a lunch and a snack costs a mere 50 cents a day per child. HSOA is planning to ask people for their spare change, and whatever funds we raise will be sent to the Give and Live Organization [based in Minnesota], who will then direct the funds to several Hmong children."

Recently, HSO held "The Cultural Show" on April 3rd to share Hmong culture with the UA campus. The show included a live interactive walkthrough called "A Forgotten Journey" that simulated the Hmong journey to America.

"'The Cultural Show' basically entailed every little detail about Hmong - their origins, their terrors, their traditions/culture, activities, food, and so forth," Thao said.

"It's just great to know that at least a small fraction of the UA population now knows about who the Hmong are, and what they have done for America," Vang said.

"An additional factor I particularly enjoyed was collaborating with the Vietnamese Student Association, whose members did their best to help us out with the Hmong Cultural Show," she said. "We are both small groups, so it was a wonderful experience to work together."

After the cultural show in the Alltell Ballroom, the walk-through engaged participants with a movie about the Hmong background, which featured tour guides presenting a hut house with traditional everyday tools, a passage through the Laos jungle and a run to safety through the Mekong River into the Thailand refugee camps.

"Our main goal towards the end of the event was to inform our audience that there is currently a Hmong genocide going on right now in Laos," Thao said. "Although many of the Hmong made it through the journey to freedom, there are still many out there stuck in the jungles in Laos waiting, crying for help.

"It's been 30 years since the Vietnam War, yet those still in the jungles believe that the war is still going on since the Laos Communist Soldiers are still hunting them down," she said.

For more information about the organization or "Coins for Change," please contact the HSOA at hsoa@uark.edu.