In the minds of many lowland Lao, the hill dwellers possess an awesome magical power. Even the former kings felt they needed these people's blessings on a regular basis, and tribal shamans are more popular (and more readily available) than doctors.
Not surprisingly the hill tribes are extensive cultivators of the opium poppy. It's an attractive crop to them because it needs to be grown at high elevations, so the more prosperous lowlanders for once can't compete. The trade is clearly tolerated, and rumor has it that you stand a better chance of getting an individual visa to visit the country after the poppy harvesting season (December to February) is over.
In the most shocking sentence in the book, Mansfield writes that "The government of Laos has declared its intention to resettle all the hill tribes onto the lowland plains within the next few years."
If put into effect, this would constitute one of the most draconian and tragic acts of social displacement in modern Asia. Indonesia's long-standing policy of moving people to remote locations is even now displaying its disastrous consequences in southern Borneo, where thousands of Maduran immigrants are having to be evacuated from Kalimantan because of the hostility of indigenous Dayaks.
The Lao hill tribes, however, are unlikely to take such threats lying down. They provided, after all, the most stubborn resistance in all Laos to the French, just as Taiwan's highland Aborigines did to the Japanese. Even so, the government plan is a real danger, and made all the more serious by the suspicion that it's the ambitions of foreign logging companies that lie behind the policy. Such people have the resources to intimidate populations in ways that Laos's impoverished government probably could not muster on its own.
This book is one of a series brought out by Oxford University Press titled "Images of Asia." Compact though they are, each is written by an expert in the field. They are colorfully illustrated and attractively produced. Among other areas covered are heritage sites, ancient cities and their historical contexts and Asia's birds. The striking illustration on the cover of this book also adorns the back cover of their catalog.For your information
Lao Hill Tribes
By Stephen Mansfield
116 pages
Oxford University Press
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