Colonel of the Army Wangyee Vang | |
|---|---|
 Formal photograph of Wangyee Vang | |
| Born | Wangyee Vang Xieng Khouang, Laos. |
| Occupations |
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Wangyee Vang is a Hmong-American community leader, educator and elder from Fresno, and the Central Valley, of California.
Colonel of the Army Wangyee Vang | |
|---|---|
| Formal photograph of Wangyee Vang | |
| Born | Wangyee Vang Xieng Khouang, Laos. |
| Occupations |
|
Wangyee Vang is a Hmong-American community leader, educator and elder from Fresno, and the Central Valley, of California.
Vang is the founder and National President of the Lao Veterans of America Institute, a national non-profit organization headquartered in Fresno, California, which serves Hmong-American, and Lao-American, veterans and their families. In the United States, Wangyee Vang has engaged in refugee and veterans' advocacy, education and training projects as well as efforts to integrate Indochinese refugees into American society and provide them access to social services. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
During the North Vietnamese invasion of Laos and in its aftermath, Wangyee Vang served in the "U.S. Secret Army" in the Royal Kingdom of Laos during the Vietnam War and was trained as an officer in Vientiane, Laos in the Royal Lao Army. He rose to the rank of Colonel. Colonel Wangyee Vang also received military and professional training during the Vietnam War in the Kingdom of Thailand and France. He speaks Hmong, Lao, French and English. [7]
Wangyee Vang played a major role in Washington, D.C., and with the Lao- and Hmong-American community, along with his brother Cherzong Vang, in the research, development, advocacy, passage and implementation of the Hmong Veterans' Naturalization Act of 2000. The legislation was introduced in the U.S. Congress by U.S. Representative Bruce Vento and Senator Paul Wellstone and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. [8] [9] [10]
In May 1997, Wangyee Vang played a key role in establishing the Laos Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery to honor Hmong and Lao veterans, and their American advisors, who served in defense of the Kingdom of Laos and U.S. national security interests during the Vietnam War. [11]
In 2013, Wangyee Vang's brother, Cherzong Vang, of St. Paul, Minnesota, was eulogized at national veterans' memorial services at the Laos Memorial in Arlington by Lao and Hmong veterans and their former military and clandestine advisors.
As National President of the Lao Veterans of America Institute, Wangyee Vang has worked to support Indochinese refugees, including Lao and Hmong refugees, and asylum seekers, fleeing persecution by the communist government in Laos after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. He has been outspoken in opposition to the forced repatriation of Hmong and Lao refugees from the Royal Kingdom Thailand back to the Marxist government in Laos that they fled. [12] [13]
Vang supported burial honors for Lao- and Hmong-American veterans who seek to be buried in U.S. national veterans cemeteries administered by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. [14] The measure is currently pending in Congress. [15] [16] [17] [18]
The Hmong people are an indigenous group in East and Southeast Asia. In China, the Hmong people are classified as a sub-group of the Miao people. The modern Hmong reside mainly in Southwest China and countries in Southeast Asia such as Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. There is also a large diasporic community in the United States of more than 300,000. The Hmong diaspora has smaller communities in Australia and South America.
Vang Pao was a major general in the Royal Lao Army and later a leader of the Hmong American community in the United States.
Bruce Frank Vento was an American politician, a Democratic-Farmer-Labor member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 until his death in 2000, representing Minnesota's 4th congressional district.
Wat Tham Krabok is a Buddhist temple (wat) in the Phra Phutthabat District of Saraburi Province, Thailand.
Hmong Americans are Americans of Hmong ancestry. Many Hmong Americans immigrated to the United States as refugees in the late 1970s. Over half of the Hmong population from Laos left the country, or attempted to leave, in 1975, at the culmination of the Laotian Civil War.
The insurgency in Laos is a low-intensity conflict between the Laotian government on one side and former members of the Secret Army, Laotian royalists, and rebels from the Hmong and lowland Lao ethnic minorities on the other. These groups have faced reprisals from the Lao People's Army and Vietnam People's Army for their support of the United States-led, anti-communist military campaigns in Laos during the Laotian Civil War, which the insurgency is an extension of itself. The North Vietnamese invaded Laos in 1958 and supported the communist Pathet Lao. The Vietnamese communists continued to support the Pathet Lao after the end of the Laotian Civil War and the establishment of the Lao People's Democratic Republic.
The Hmong and Lao Memorial, or Lao Veterans of America Monument, is a granite monument, bronze plaque and living memorial in Arlington National Cemetery in the US. Dedicated in May 1997, it is located in Section 2 on Grant Avenue between the path to the JFK memorial and the Tomb of the Unknowns, in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia, in the United States. The Laos–Hmong memorial commemorates the veterans of the "Secret War" in Laos who fought against invading Soviet Union-backed North Vietnam Army forces of the People's Army of Vietnam and communist Pathet Lao guerrillas. Approved by the U.S. Department of Defense, Arlington National Cemetery, and the U.S. Department of the Army, but designed and paid for privately by the Lao Veterans of America, Inc., the Lao Veterans of America Institute, and The Centre for Public Policy Analysis, the memorial stands as a tribute to the Hmong, Lao, other ethnic groups, and American clandestine and military advisers who made up the Secret War effort during the Vietnam War. The Lao Veterans of America, Inc. is the nation's largest ethnic Laotian- and Hmong-American veterans organization.
Albert "Al" Santoli is an American writer and Founder as well as President of the Asia America Initiative. He served in combat as a rifleman for the 25th Infantry Division during the Vietnam War. He is currently an adjunct professor of the Institute of World Politics and teaches a course entitled "Counterterrorism through Cultural Engagement and Development."
The alleged 2007 Laotian coup d'état plan was a conspiracy allegation by the United States Department of Justice that Lt. Col. Harrison Jack (Ret.) and former Royal Lao Army Major General Vang Pao, among others conspired in June 2007 to obtain large amounts of heavy weapons and ammunition to overthrow the Communist government of Laos in violation of the Neutrality Act. The charges were ultimately dropped and the case helped serve to further highlight, instead, major human rights violations by the Lao government against the Hmong ethnic minority, Laotian refugees, and political dissidents.
Relations between Laos and the United States officially began when the United States opened a legation in Laos in 1950, when Laos was a semi-autonomous state within French Indochina. These relations were maintained after Laos' independence in October 1953.
Vang Pobzeb was a Hmong American dedicated to Lao and Hmong human rights. For over 25 years, he was an outspoken critic of the Marxist governments of the Pathet Lao in Laos and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) and their human rights violations, religious freedom violations, and persecution of the Lao and Hmong people.
The Center for Public Policy Analysis (CPPA), or Centre for Public Policy Analysis, was established in Washington, D.C., in 1988 and describes itself as a non-profit, non-partisan, think tank and research organization. The CPPA is a non-governmental organization (NGO) focused on foreign policy, national security, human rights, refugee and international humanitarian issues. Its current executive director is Philip Smith.
The Lao Veterans of America, Inc., describes itself as a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental, veterans organization that represents Lao- and Hmong-American veterans who served in the U.S. clandestine war in the Kingdom of Laos during the Vietnam War as well as their refugee families in the United States.
The United League for Democracy in Laos, Inc. (ULDL) is a non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO) based in the Washington, D.C.-area with chapters and members in the United States, Thailand, and Laos. The ULDL has worked to provide information about developments in Laos regarding civil society, human rights, pro-democracy, religious freedom, political prisoners, and environmental issues.
The Lao Human Rights Council, Inc. (LHRC) is a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental (NGO) refugee and human rights organization. It is based nationally, and internationally, with chapters in Colorado, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The Lao Human Rights Council, Inc. researches, and provides information and education regarding the plight of Laotian and Hmong people, and refugees persecuted in Laos, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Thailand. It was founded by Dr. Pozbeb Vang, Vang Pobzeb of Greenbay Wisconsin. The Lao Human Rights Council, Inc. is currently headed by Vaughn Vang, an educator, and former political refugee from the Royal Kingdom of Laos, who is a Hmong-American—and who was born, and grew up, in Laos prior to the North Vietnamese invasion of Laos and Marxist takeover in 1975.
The Hmong are a major ethnic group in Fresno, California. The Fresno Hmong community, along with that of Minneapolis/St. Paul, is one of the largest two urban U.S. Hmong communities. As of 1993 the Hmong were the largest Southeast Asian ethnic group in Fresno. As of 2010, there are 24,328 people of Hmong descent living in Fresno, making up 4.9% of the city's population.
The Hmong Veterans' Naturalization Act of 2000 is legislation which granted Hmong and ethnic Laotian veterans, who were legal refugee aliens in the US from the communist Lao government, and who also served in U.S.-backed guerrilla, or US special forces-backed units in Laos, during the Vietnam War, "an exemption from the English language requirement and special consideration for civics testing for certain refugees from Laos applying for naturalization." The initial Act gave these alien veterans eighteen months since the day of the bill's passage by the U.S. Congress, and its signature by the President of the United States, to file a naturalization application for honorary U.S. citizenship. However, the Act was later amended by additional legislation passed by the United States Congress which extended the N-400 filing date by an additional 18 months.
Cherzong Vang was an American community leader from St. Paul, Minnesota. He was an elder of the Hmong people in Laos and the Lao-American community in the Twin Cities of the United States.
The Lao Veterans of America Institute (LVAI) is a national non-profit organization based in Fresno, and the Central Valley, of California, with chapters throughout California. It is one of the largest ethnic Lao- and Hmong-American veterans organizations representing tens of thousands of Lao Hmong veterans who served in the Vietnam War in the Royal Kingdom of Laos as well as their refugee families who were resettled in the United States after the conflict.