Channapha Khamvongsa | Activist
“This Legacy must end, so a new one can begin.”
Channapha Khamvongsa’s sincerity and commitment to her mission are apparent and have been reinforced, rather than subverted, over the course of a tough life.
Channapha was born in the little-known country of Laos in 1973 when the country’s civil war was ending. Political struggle, lesser armed conflict and full-scale war had been almost endemic in Laos for the thirty years prior to 1975 and had reached a climax with the U.S. bombing campaign which lasted from June 1964 until June 1973. During this period, the U.S. conducted what has become known as “The Secret War in Laos,” kept hidden from Americans and from Congress. Over the course of a decade, the U.S. military dropped in excess of two million tons of explosive devices on the country.
The conflict known in the West as the Vietnam War, and in Southeast Asia as the American War, involved far more than Vietnam. Without Laos and its communist faction, North Vietnam could not have prevailed in reuniting its country; without North Vietnam, the communist Pathet Lao could not have taken over the government of Laos.
There were two objectives to the bombing. The first was to stem the political tide of communism in the north of Laos. The second was to interfere with the Viet Minh’s ability to resupply and reinforce their Viet Cong comrades in South Vietnam. To do this, the North Vietnamese developed a network of trails and roads through the jungle-clad mountains of southern Laos referred to as The Ho Chi Minh Trail. In an attempt to cut off the flow of men and materiel down the trail, the U.S. dropped a continuous stream of explosives. By the end of the nine-year bombardment of Laos, something on the order of one ton of explosives had been dropped per individual member of the Lao population.
Many of these explosives failed to detonate and still litter the countryside of Lao PDR to this day. Even worse were the cluster submunitions. Cluster bombs open out at a predetermined height and spray a large quantity of cluster submunitions (or, in Laos, bombies) over the countryside. At a very minimum, 270,000,000 bombies were dropped on the country and about 30%, or 80,000,000 did not explode at that time. Most are still there today awaiting a hapless farmer, traveler, forager in the jungle, or a curious child, to complete their murderous task. In 20 years of clearance – 1994-2013 – official efforts have cleared half-a-million of these. At this rate, it will take 3,200 years to clear them all.
For the Khamvongsa family, in the period after the conflict, life was very uncertain; the Royalist government in Laos, supported by the U.S., was displaced by the communist Pathet Lao and its political wing, the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, which was supported by the Soviet Union.
Those who had been to the right (or even in the center) of the system, fearing their safety under communist rule, crossed the Mekong into the comparative safety of Thailand. The Khamvongsa family made this trip in 1979 when Channapha was six years old. After a hugely daunting and extended escape experience, they spent a year living in a border refugee camp. They were accepted for immigration to the U.S.A. and settled in Falls Creek, Virginia.
Growing up in America, Channapha pursued an educational path available to many middle-class American young people and in 2000 earned a bachelor’s degree, followed by a master’s in 2002.
She founded Legacies of War, a D.C.-based non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to raising awareness about the history and continued effects of the Vietnam War-era bombings in Laos through the use of art, culture, education, and advocacy.
Only an Excerpt: READ MORE AT : AMERICANS WHO TELL THE TRUTH
ART By Americans Who Tell the Truth
A collection of portraits & narratives of citizens who courageously address social, environmental & economic fairness by artist Robert Shetterly.
