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.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
RSS