Spotlight shines on Laos as it takes a turn in the ASEAN chair
As Laos kicks off its chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, activists fear that the human rights agenda in the country and the region will get swamped by economic concerns and regional discord over issues like the partition of the South China Sea.
“When geopolitical interests are crucial, I am afraid that human rights and democratic values are the very first things to appear in words alone, only to be left out and not truly followed,” Vanida Thepsouvanh, president of the Paris-based Lao Movement for Human Rights told RFA’s Lao Service.
