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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 VIENTIANE 000447 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR EAP/MLS, DRL 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/19/2016 
TAGS: SOCI PGOV PINR LA
SUBJECT: DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: LAOS REWRITES ITS 
PAST 
 
Classified By: Ambassador Patricia M. Haslach, reason 1.4 (b) and (d). 
 
Summary 
------- 
¶1. (C) Laos isn't unique among countries whose governments 
rewrite history to serve their own ends, but the Communist 
leadership here has taken the process to its extreme.  The 
Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) has concocted a 
black-and-white version of the recent past that is designed 
purely to serve political ends.  The pre-1975 Royal Lao 
Government and Laos' "colonial oppressors" (Thailand, France 
and the U.S.) are equally vilified.  Unsurprisingly, the 
Party has airbrushed the post-1975 period as well, 
conveniently dispensing with the 1975-1986 "high socialism" 
of reeducation camps, collectivized farms, defrocked monks 
and refugee drain.  Laos' young are learning nothing of their 
real past, and the old find it convenient to forget.  Few Lao 
of any age seem to be aware of the extent to which their 
history has been reconfigured by the regime.  Therein lies 
the danger: soothed by a fairy-tale history, the Lao people 
are lulled into a complacency that leaves them ill-equipped 
to deal with a changing world.  End summary. 
 
Lao history, the Communist way 
------------------------------ 
¶2. (C) A visit to any of Vientiane's "museums" -- the Kaysone 
Phomvihane Museum, National Museum, or the newly-opened Army 
Museum -- is an eye-opener for anyone expecting a third-world 
Smithsonian. These institutions are not about presenting a 
balanced view of the past; they provide a near-fictional 
account of Laos' heroic struggle against a series of 
ill-intended colonial oppressors, from the Thai to the French 
to the Americans.  The central theme is the LPRP's 
single-minded dedication to liberating and developing Laos. 
 
¶3. (C) The displays (almost identical in the three museums in 
spite of their disparate subjects) make few efforts at 
serious scholarship: photos of what are clearly Vietnamese 
soldiers in the Army Museum are labeled "Pathet Lao 
fighters," presumably because the museum staff couldn't find 
a picture of a Pathet Lao soldier anywhere near a front line. 
A circa-1900 picture of "French colonial invaders" looks more 
like some turn-of-the-century hunting party, and probably 
was. What matters is not factual accuracy in the details but 
the creation of an impression, of a good-versus-evil world 
where Laos' Communists (with a little help from their 
Vietnamese comrades) saved Laos from extinction and 
single-handedly crafted the workers' paradise it is today. 
 
¶4. (C) That theme, monolithic in its delivery, suffuses 
modern-day Laos.  It is being given even greater emphasis as 
Laos moves farther from its revolutionary beginnings and 
interest in the past wanes. Lao students learn this imaginary 
version of history from their first years; the drumbeat 
continues (for the minority who are given the opportunity) 
right through high schools and university. Lao "history 
books" take up the message. Histories that have been 
published in the last decade, including a magnum opus 
"History of Laos" and several heroic accounts of the Pathet 
Lao struggle during the war (one authored, or so it says, by 
the Deputy Defense Minister), would do Stalin proud. They 
describe historical events that bear little resemblance to 
the Lao history described by Thai or western scholars. 
Beyond this, every speech, every newspaper article, and every 
conversation with a Lao official that touches on Lao history 
echoes this fictionalized rendering of the past. 
 
Fiddling with the facts 
----------------------- 
¶5. (C) Laos is a one-party state, with a tightly-controlled 
media and no free press, and there is no alternative to LPRP 
official history except in the memories of those old enough 
to have lived through it. One example of creative rewriting 
that we've seen over the past year is the series of 
anniversaries of diplomatic ties, including between the U.S. 
and Laos. The Party has made a point of celebrating 50-year 
anniversaries of relations between a number of countries and 
"the Lao PDR," although the Lao PDR only came into existence 
in 1975. Those earlier ties were with the Royal Lao 
Government, but the Party clearly would prefer that footnote 
be forgotten. 
 
¶6. (C) Even the post-1975 period (the "independence period," 
the LPRP calls it, forgetting that the Royal Lao Government 
 
VIENTIANE 00000447  002 OF 003 
 
 
was both independent and held a seat in the UN for 20 years 
before 1975) has not been immune from reinvention. The decade 
after 1975 was indeed one that most people would as soon 
forget: nearly all former officials and soldiers of the old 
regime were sent to brutal reeducation camps, where many 
died; the government instituted a harsh form of 
collectivization that bred starvation in some areas; zealous 
Party officials tried to abolish Buddhism; and at least a 
tenth of the population voted with their feet and fled to 
refugee camps in Thailand. 
 
¶7. (C) But today, the Party makes almost no mention of what 
Lao scholar Grant Evans refers to as the period of "high 
socialism."  Evans, an Australian scholar now with the Ecole 
Francaise d'Exteme Orient (EFEO) in Vientiane, has been 
especially critical of the Party's airbrushing of the recent 
past.  Lao discussions of the Lao PDR's history increasingly 
ignore those first ten years, and only comment on events 
since 1986, when Laos adopted economic reform. The mistakes 
of the first decade are being conveniently written out of 
history. 
 
The Tham Pieu hoax 
------------------ 
¶8. (C) The "Tham Pieu Tragedy" provides a case study in how 
the LPRP is manipulating the past.  According to the Lao 
government, in November 1968 an American aircraft fired two 
missiles into Tham Pieu cave in eastern Xieng Khouang 
province, killing 374 innocent villagers who were sheltering 
there. This incident was largely unknown until a few years 
ago, when the government suddenly resurrected it as a 
textbook American atrocity.  Over time more details have been 
added on the tragedy.  The government now commemorates the 
event each year on its anniversary with a gathering of senior 
Party officials at the site, and recently opened a museum 
near the cave, complete with graphic paintings of bloody 
bodies in the aftermath of the attack.  The story 
approximates My Lai in its horrific details of hundreds of 
innocents dying at the hands of bloodthirsty Americans. 
 
¶9. (C) The big difference between Tham Pieu and My Lai is 
that Tham Pieu is a lie. Villagers in the area know the 
"official" story well, and will repeat it to any travelers. 
Quietly, however, some Xieng Khouang natives (including the 
son of the wartime governor of the province) have told us 
that Tham Pieu was in fact a North Vietnamese arms dump and 
hideout.  The aircraft that fired the missile was most likely 
a Royal Lao Air Force T-28, whose rockets set off secondary 
explosions that killed numerous Vietnamese soldiers and 
probably some civilians as well. The cave's location at the 
entrance to the Ban Ban valley, the PAVN's main staging area 
for attacks on the Plain of Jars, made it an unavoidable 
target. The story is tragic, but the reality bears little 
resemblance to the GoL's fantasy. Nevertheless, since the 
Party incorporated Tham Pieu into its account of the war, the 
details have been repeated so often that the GoL's version is 
usually taken at face value.  Some guidebooks dutifully 
repeat the government's line, but the bible of Lao 
backpackers, "Lonely Planet," notes that most of those killed 
were Vietnamese and that Vietnam repatriated most of the 
remains in the cave in the 1980's. 
 
¶10. (C) With a young population and fewer people each year 
who remember the pre-1975 period, the Communist version of 
history, with Tham Pieu and a hundred other incidents, is the 
only game in town. The Party is determined to make its 
version real, borrowing a page from "1984," by telling the 
story until it becomes fact.  The spurt of new museums (the 
Lao also opened a museum to the Lao PDR's first president, 
the "Red Prince" Souphanouvong, concurrent with the new Army 
Museum) and the release of half a dozen history books in the 
last few years reveal a commitment to make their story stick. 
In fifty years, who will know better?  Riding the currents 
from one regime to another, the Lao appear content with the 
history they are fed. 
 
Who will remember? 
------------------ 
¶11. (C) Grant Evans has written about Laos' collective 
amnesia and would like to fight the current, but as a 
foreigner is at a disadvantage. He has recently written a 
history of the royal family of Laos, focusing on its last 100 
years and drawing on the recollections and collected 
memorabilia of dozens of persons associated with the court in 
 
VIENTIANE 00000447  003 OF 003 
 
 
its last years. The book was a labor of love to preserve some 
piece of Laos' last monarchs, consigned to the dustbin by the 
regime (although bizarrely two statues of King Sisavang Vong, 
who died in 1960, still stand in Vientiane and Luang Prabang, 
left up by the regime after 1975 because they were gifts to 
the Royal Lao Government from the Soviet Union). 
 
¶12. (C) His book will never see the light of day in Laos, but 
Evans has undertaken another history project with more 
promise.  With Swedish government funding, he has completed a 
Lao translation of another of his works, "A Short History of 
Laos."  Evans told us the original chapter on the post-1975 
period was "too sensitive" and was excised from the 
translation, but the rest, including its discussion of the 
war (with North Vietnamese aggression) was left intact. Evans 
and his supporters hope to distribute the book in "urban 
guerilla" fashion, handing out free copies to anyone 
interested, since there is no hope the Ministry of 
Information and Culture will sign off.  The object, as Dr. 
Evans has said, is to leave some reminder to the Lao people 
that their past is far more shaded -- and more interesting -- 
than the version purveyed by the Communists. 
 
Comment 
------- 
¶13. (C) The Lao people are complicit in this Orwellian 
rewriting of the past.  Even those who were part of the old 
system play along with the lie, pretending they were somehow 
on the side of the Communists all along.  History, 
ultimately, simply doesn't matter to most people, and if the 
government wants to change the past, so be it. No doubt the 
Communists' job is made easier by the note of national pride 
their history strikes in many Lao.  To rank-and-file Lao, it 
is a matter of honor, if not of historical accuracy, that the 
LPRP fought off three colonial oppressors and single-handedly 
rescued Laos from sublimation by imperialist powers. 
 
¶14. (C) But the Lao are losing sight of where they have been, 
forgetting their dramatic and colorful and turbid history. 
By accepting at face value the Party's account of its 
unbroken success in delivering independence and national 
development, the Lao people have been lulled into a 
complacency that does not allow them to judge critically 
where they stand in the world.  They have little sense of how 
poorly the Party and government have served them, or how much 
farther along Laos might have been if things had worked out 
differently.  The Party has largely succeeded in rewriting 
the past, but at the cost of leaving the country with no real 
sense of its future.  End comment. 
HASLACH