Laos

In a letter to sponsors (May, 1975) Mr Renner says:

"We have been forced to close our child sponsorship programme (in Laos) due to civilian and government unrest. Also Pathet Lao members have intruded into our World Vision Office in reaction against our Thai Director, Sakda Phaphoum.'

The New Citizen for June 26th contained a report of an interview between the Minister of Religious Affairs of the New Government in Laos and Mr Sam Isaac of Asian Christian Service (The World Council of Churches agency).

In the discussion the Minister was critical of some of the missionary groups in Laos who had let themselves be used as agents of the American CIA. He claimed that "the activities of World Vision, an American-based aid operation had antagonised the people so much there were popular demonstrations and the decision had been made at Cabinet level to have them expelled from the country."

During our discuusion we received a page 10 letter from a New Zealander presently in Laos, who told us:

"Since I arrived here World Vision has been paralysed by a strike the ins and outs of which I cannot follow although it sounds like inter-tribal warfare. The posters outside their office look rather like a case of hanging one's dirty linen in public. Even though I cannot read them, the pictures are telling enough." This seems to support the official

Government view of the situation. Other Christian and secular agencies have continued to work in South Vietnam and Laos since the fall of the Thieu government and the fall of the Lao government, whereas World Vision aid has been discontinued. We suggest that World Vision's inability to continue to work in Indochina is a direct result of the political stance taken by that organisation during the war years. That stance makes them no longer acceptable to the new governments.