By John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writer
An estimated 4,200 ethnic Hmong, many of whom fought for or are related to soldiers who worked with the CIA during the Vietnam War, are set to be expelled from Thailand back to Laos, where they could face political persecution.
The State Department said Thursday that it was deeply concerned about the fate of the Hmong, an ethnic minority that battled the communist government of Laos for years with U.S. support.
The Thai military had dispatched more than 30 trucks Thursday evening to a refugee camp containing some 4,000 Hmong in central Thailand, and shut off satellite and cellphone service from the camp, according to human rights officials. The Thai military was also believed to be preparing to expel an additional 158 Hmong in a camp near the Thailand-Laos border, even though members of that group have already been granted refugee status by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
The forced resettlement, which the Thai government had announced would take place before the end of this year, would mark the second such repatriation of refugees in Southeast Asia in a week. On Saturday, Cambodia sent 20 Uighur refugees back to China for certain punishment because of their links to violent protests over the summer in northwestern China.
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