“US Should Withhold Trade, Aid From Laos Barring Rights Improvements: Advocacy Leader”

Washington must withhold trade agreements and assistance from Laos until its government can demonstrate concrete progress on human rights and democratic reform in the one party communist country, the head of an advocacy group has recommended to U.S. lawmakers.

Mutually beneficial trade arrangements and political exchanges cannot take place between the U.S. and nations that deny basic human rights and operate under repressive systems of governance, Bounchanh Sethavong, president of U.S.-based Union for the Lao Nation, told the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the U.S. Congress in Washington…during a briefing on Laos and Cambodia…

Among the examples of “significant human rights abuses” Bounchanh said should be given greater attention by Congress and the U.S. government were restrictions on freedom of speech and of the press, arbitrary detentions and disappearances, limits on workers’ rights, and unlawful land grabs and deforestation…