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Groups want summit focus on human rights abuses

Wednesday, December 1, 1999

By PHUONG LE Mail Author
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Listen to Thuong Thach's story, and you may understand why he woke up early yesterday morning and stood in pouring rain for hours -- all to demonstrate a point.

Thach, a Khmer Krom who lives in Tacoma, survived 13 years in a re-education camp in Vietnam. He was forced by the Vietnamese government to break rocks, make bricks in factories and work in the rice fields.

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Now, he works to end labor exploitation and human-rights abuses against his people, an ethnic minority in Vietnam.

Yesterday, the 60-year-old man demonstrated at Denny Way and Bell Street, calling for an end to discrimination against the Khmer Krom people by the Vietnamese government.

"We're here so that the international community will know what they do," said Thach, a member of the Khmer Kampuchea-Krom Federation, a worldwide group that opposes the Vietnamese government's treatment of the Khmer Krom. "This is the occasion to demonstrate."

Thach left the country in 1990 but still has close ties to family and friends.

The Khmer Krom are the indigenous people of the former Cochin China, which is now the southern part of Vietnam. They number about 7 million in Vietnam and 8.2 million worldwide.

There were other stories similar to Thach's. Personal accounts of why demonstrators took to the streets, trumpeting little-known causes often involving countries few have visited.

Vanhlang Khamsouk lives in Portland, but his home country of Laos, which he fled in 1975, is often on his mind.

Yesterday, Khamsouk and his group protested the Lao government's crackdown last month of a student demonstration that called for democratic reforms.

"We want the Laos government to go through political and economic reform," said the 49-year-old, who criticized the government's human-rights record.

"It seems that everybody who has an agenda is here," said Doma Chagzoetsang, 43, who was born in Tibet, raised in India and moved to Seattle in 1981.

A member of the Tibetan Association of Washington, she demonstrated yesterday to call attention to China's rule in Tibet.

"If China is to be a member of the WTO, they should be held responsible for freeing Tibet and not prosecuting their own citizens," she said. "Until then, we don't want China to be in the WTO."

Up the street, tranquil music filled the cold air as about 50 people practiced meditative exercises in Denny Park.

Eyes shut and deep in meditation, they raised their arms above their heads and gracefully moved in unison. The exercises are part of Falun Dafa, a traditional Chinese practice designed to improve mind and body.

Jouyi Shiou, high school teacher from Taiwan, said the practice has brought her tranquillity, ended her bouts of depression and made her a better person.

"I benefit from it," she said. "I've improved in body and spirit. I'm really concerned about what's happening in China."

The group chose Seattle for the site of their demonstration, but not because they wanted to protest WTO. They oppose China's crackdown on those who practice Falun Dafa.

P-I reporter Phuong Le can be reached at 206-903-0728 or phuongle@seattle-pi.com

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