by Brett Dakin
Newspapers in Laos did not report on the government’s investigations into the bombings.
The Lao government vehemently denied any internal rift. But the Party was clearly losing control. The social contract that had held Laos together since the communists had taken power—in return for the re-establishment of order and a modicum of prosperity, the people would keep quiet and let the cavemen stay in power for as long as they pleased—was unraveling. Due to the government’s mishandling of the Asian financial crisis, Laos’ economy was heading south while the rest of Southeast Asia was recovering.
Western reporters liked to describe Vientiane as the “sleepy capital” of a “tiny communist nation” with “serene smiles and placid ways.” Laos did at times seem like a happy place where nothing ever went wrong. But beneath the surface, deep and inescapable tensions had begun to emerge. When men and women like Seng were not receiving their government salaries and had to work weekends to supplement their devastated savings; when government offices relied on the largesse of foreign donors just to keep their printers stocked with paper; when well-educated twenty-somethings like Paul saw no future for themselves in their own country; and when teenagers in Laos’ urban areas looked to amphetamines as an escape from the boredom of their lives—when all of this was happening, it was to be expected that the government would face some sort of opposition. And since no dissent or dialogue of any kind was permitted in Laos, these frustrations were channeled into violence.
While I was living in Laos, one group of courageous citizens had made a non-violent attempt to force political change in Vientiane. In October 1999, on the very day that I’d been enjoying the boat races as part of Boun Awk Phansaa, at least fifty students and teachers at the National University had held a peaceful protest outside the Presidential Palace. I had been just a few minutes away, but heard nothing about it until days later. In an open letter I found on the website of a US-based anti-communist group, the protesters called for respect for human rights, the release of political prisoners, a multi-party political system, and elections for a new National Assembly. This brave call would be their last. While refusing to acknowledge that anything had happened, the government unceremoniously carted the protesters off to prison. At last count, at least five remained in detention without trial.
In the end, the most important weapon the government had was Laos’ political vacuum: it was the only game in town. Unlike in Burma, there was no organized opposition. There had never been a student movement, as there had been in China. In Laos, there was no alternative to the Party. Even the disaffected royalists across the world in France and the US had little to offer their compatriots in Laos other than reminiscences about glorious days gone by. There was no guarantee that any of them could do a better job of governing Laos than the communists.
The people of Laos were stuck.
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As time passed, I became less fastidious about checking up on the situation in Laos. I could feel the country slipping away, my experience there receding into memory. I enrolled in law school in the US, and began to engage, however reluctantly, in an attempt to understand the intricacies of tort law and the rule against perpetuities. Laos may have been falling apart, but the country rarely made it into the headlines in the West.
I had to work hard to find out what was happening in Vientiane, and my contacts in Laos didn’t always feel free to speak openly about the situation there. The Lao government did its best to keep tabs on Internet usage, and was known to intercept e-mail communication. The government controlled all domestic Internet servers, and occasionally blocked access to sites that were critical of the Party; in October 2000, the National Internet Control Committee passed Internet-related regulations, making “disturbing the peace and happiness of the community” a crime.
My Lao language skills began to fade, and soon I found myself struggling to recall the names of places that not long before had been entirely familiar. I found no one with whom I could even share my experiences in Laos, let alone practice speaking the language. To meet someone who had even visited the country was rare; to find someone who had lived there was impossible. Most of my classmates had no reaction when I mentioned that I’d lived in Laos. For American students who had spent the previous two years reaping the benefits of an overheated economy and steeped in the petty political scandals that had dominated American public life, a life in Laos must have seemed irrelevant and uninteresting. What bearing could it possibly have had on their lives and their future aspirations? Surrounded by disinterest, I found it difficult to draw connections between my time in Laos and the life I was leading in Cambridge. A wall had been erected between the two experiences, and only occasionally and with much effort would I succeed in climbing over it. I couldn’t think of Laos casually; to really remember my life there required an almost complete immersion in the images and senses of the place. Given all the work I had to do, and the new life I wanted to forge for myself, I simply couldn’t afford such excursions.
During a break from school, I took a trip to Paris, where Michel was now living. I looked forward to exploring the city, from the ancient gravestones of Père-la-Chaise to the cafés of Montmartre, and enjoying some good wine. But most of all, I looked forward to the opportunity to talk with Michel about Laos. We met at a small café near the Bastille, a funky little place run by a lesbian couple who served up a rather suspect, but in the end not unenjoyable plat du jour. As usual, Michel was brimming with enthusiasm. He talked excitedly about the new life he was building with his wife, whom he had met in Korea. He told me all about a jazz festival that was in town and the exhibits I needed to see before I left. When it came to Laos, however, Michel had little to say. In the time since he’d returned to France, he had made no effort to connect to the large Lao community in Paris, and had forgotten most of what he had known of the language. While I wanted to talk about Laos, Michel seemed to want to avoid it.
“Do you ever talk with anyone about Laos?” I asked him.
“No, not really,” he replied.
“But don’t you ever think about it?“
“Well, sometimes. But not much, Brett. In fact, I can’t think about it. Je n’ai pas le droit d’y penser. I don’t have the right to think about it.”
Michel felt that he didn’t have the luxury to think about his life in Laos. He couldn’t allow his mind to travel back to a time before he had even met his wife. His life in Paris was complete—and completely separate from his life in Laos. He simply preferred not to scale the wall that kept the two experiences apart. It just wasn’t worth it.
I know what Michel means. I often feel as though I don’t have the right to think about Laos, that there’s no space in my life today for memories of it. I wonder if the two experiences will ever be reconciled. But I know that my time in Laos was far more than a two-year break. It remains an integral part of my life today, here and now, and the person I have become. The way I think about the world. And my place in it. So I try to remember. As I sit at my desk in Cambridge, I try to recapture the details of my life in Laos. . . .
But it’s hard, even, to imagine I was ever there. It seems so far away, sometimes. So far from this life.
About the Author
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Brett Dakin grew up in London and has lived in Washington, Tokyo, Vientiane, Vienna, Sarajevo, The Hague, and New York City. Brett is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. His writing has appeared in the International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Guardian. Brett is Chair of Legacies of War, a non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness about the Vietnam War-era bombing of Laos, and Princeton’s East Asian Studies Advisory Council. Please visit www.brettdakin.com
Copyright © 2003, 2011 by Brett Dakin
All rights reserved. Originally published by Asia Books, Bangkok, Thailand, in 2003. First eBook edition 2008.
ISBN 974-8303-68-3
ASIN B0032FO7BI