Laotian Refugees in Thailand: The Thai and US Response, 1975 to 1988

Abstract

In three decades of civil and international conflict in Laos three-quarters of a million people were left homeless, their fields and villages overrun in the deadly territorial struggles between royalist, communist and neutralist armies, or blasted by an American air war that dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on Laos, making it, on a per capita basis, the most heavily bombed nation in history.¹ Many of the refugees did not wait for the official end to leave the country, and by 2 December 1975, when the Lao People’s Democratic Republic was established, more than 54,000 people already had fled into neighbouring Thailand.² In the years following, the refugee flows from Laos have ebbed and surged but never stopped. More than 375,000 have entered Thailand since 1975, fully 10 per cent of the population of Laos. Of these, the international community has resettled about 250,000 with the United States taking 75 per cent of this total, and another 50,000 are estimated to have settled surreptitiously in Thailand.³ At the end of 1988 about 77,000 Laotians⁴ were living in four refugee camps close to the Thai-Lao border. Only about 3,000 have chosen to repatriate voluntarily through a UN-sponsored programme, although between 15,000 and 17,000 are thought to have gone home on their own.