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Cluster bombs of the Secret War

Last week I made my first visit to the beautiful and neglected country of Laos to learn about these vicious objects:

. . . unexploded cluster bombs. My story appeared here in Saturday's Times. I attach a longer version below.

Thanks to the many people who helped to organise the trip. Those interested in learning more about the issue can look at their various websites.

I was invited by the International Committee of the Red Cross which is campaigning for an outright ban on all cluster munitions. Our host were the Lao government's National Regulatory Authority UXO and Lao National Unexploded Ordnance Programme which struggles on bravely in the face of an impossible task. The United Nations Development Programme also supports demining in the country.

A fascinating part of the story, which I had too little space to dwell on in my piece, is the effort by the Lao government and UNESCO to aquire World Heritage Status for the  Plain of Jars, a beautiful and mysterious archaeological site which, in my view, was plainly constructed by extraterrestrials.

I encountered two NGOs doing valuable work in Laos - the Mines Advisory Group (which tries to defuse the cluster bombs before they go off), and COPE Laos (which helps the victims after they do). In this picture, Joe Pereira of COPE displays some of the prosthetic limbs which the organisation makes for injured Laos.

All these photographs were shot for the ICRC by the excellent Vientiane-based photographer, Jim Holmes.

Continue reading for my story . . .

Please don't kill me

Ooh, I've just had my first death threat - by email, which is somehow less scary than scrawled in blood on a scrap of parchment wrapped round a bullet. It's from a chap who calls himself Che Trung Hieu, and who is peeved about my reporting from Vietnam (there's one piece here, others below on this blog). A quick Google reveals that various other similarly scabrous hate messages have been posted under the same name. The question is always whether one should flatter such potty-mouthed minnows (is that a mixed metaphor? Minnows don't use potties, do they?) by reproducing their screeds. But this one made me smile, so just this once ...

Mr Hieu's email is entitled "If you lie, you will be punished !"

Lê Thị Công Nhân

The Vietnamese government is one of those regimes whose repression is so narrowly concentrated that casual visitors - and even its own citizens, for some of the time at least - are quite unaware of it. Singapore, a very different country in most ways, has a broadly similar approach. Leave people alone as long as they are making money, creating silk paintings, winning Olympic medals and the like. But as soon as they assert themselves politically, as soon as they question the authority of the Party - then crush them.

Singapore uses the courts to do this. Vietnam - franker and less developed in its authoritarianism - uses the secret police.

A week ago, I visited two veteran dissidents in Ho Chi Minh City - Dr Nguyen Dan Que and the Venerable Thich Quang Do (and wrote about them here). They are men of the pre-war generation, who lived through most of Vietnam's 20th century tragedy - the Second World War, the French Indo-China War and the Vietnam War. Despite the continuing monopoly of the Vietnam Communist Party, the country has become prosperous beyond recognition in the past 20 years. For young people, there are opportunities which their parents could not have imagined. But even among those with the most to lose, there are young Vietnamese prepared to take on the authorities, and pay the price.

Last week I encountered one of them - the courageous and stubborn young woman pictured above, Lê Thị Công Nhân.

G*** M******, Vietnam

[UPDATE: Tuesday 21st, noon. From my hotel in Dong Hoi I can access the website now, although I couldn't from the Internet cafe in town 20 minutes ago. Inconsistent censorship on different servers? Or am I imagining the whole thing?]

I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that The Times is been censored online in Vietnam. I’m sitting in an Internet café in Hanoi airport and, although I can access this blog page, anything beginning www.timesonline generates an error message – although the other British papers load as usual.

I think I know the reason why – the piece I wrote for Saturday's newspaper about cyber-dissidents and the way they are using (and being persecuted for using) the Internet.

Fast work by the censors - but up yours, anyway, boys!

Is there anyone reading this in Vietnam who can check this? Meanwhile, for those who are unable to read it on the newspaper website, here is the piece in question . . .