A legendary Hmong general who led a CIA-backed “secret army” in the Vietnam war was honored at Arlington National Cemetery on Friday, three months after US authorities refused his burial there.
In a move hailed by his family, the US Army sent an honor guard and wreath bearer for the ceremony for General Vang Pao and other veterans at Arlington, the traditional resting place of US veterans.
“It is good that the US government, and the US Army sent an honor guard to participate in this ceremony,” his 59-year-old son Chong Vang told reporters after the 90-minute ceremony at the Lao Veterans of America monument in the cemetery.
Photo: AFP
The 81-year-old general died on Jan. 6 in California and was buried near Los Angeles on Feb. 9 after efforts failed to persuade US authorities to allow his burial at Arlington.
US intelligence agents had tapped Vang Pao when they sought a force in Laos to fight off North Vietnamese communists, who along with the US had turned the neighboring country into a battleground.
Vang Pao became legendary for his organizational skills from his mountain post, guiding everything from US air strikes to medical -supplies and managing a motley army of Hmong, lowland Lao and Thai mercenaries.
North Vietnam triumphed in 1975 by seizing Saigon and communists afterward took over Laos. Vang Pao was sentenced to death in absentia and became the leader for some 250,000 Hmong who moved to the US.
However, Vang Pao remained a controversial figure. In 2007, he was arrested in California on charges of plotting to overthrow a foreign government, although prosecutors dropped their charges in 2009.
Speaking after Friday’s ceremony, Vang Pao’s son said he still believed his father should be buried in Arlington, rather than in California where he died in January.
“He’s almost like the US Army, but he’s not a US citizen, so that’s why ... they didn’t allow my father to be buried in Arlington ... For myself, I think he deserves to be buried in Arlington,” he said.
Colonel Wangyee Vang of the Lao Veterans of America Institute was to pay tribute to Vang Pao at the ceremony.
“During the Vietnam conflict, we fought side-by-side [with] the United States in southeast Asia against the advancement of the communists’ expansion,” he was due to say, according to the text of his address. “From the period of 1961 to 1975, we lost over 35,000 young brave men and women. And on Jan, 6, 2011, we also lost our leader.”
He added that, 36 years after the end of the war, “those veterans and their families who we left behind, in the jungle of the Kingdom of Laos, still struggle for freedom in that part of the world.”
“They are being chased and killed by the current government of Laos because ... they were allies with the United States during the war. The United States must not forget the loyalty of their allies,” he said.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese