Hmong and Lao Refugee Women - Hmong Studies Internet ...

Hmong and Lao Refugee Women: Reflections of a Hmong-American Woman Anthropologist by Dia Cha, Ph.D. Hmong Studies Journal,
2005, 6: 1-35.
could schedule few such liberating offerings in the face of such attenuated interest – an attenuated interest
which was, after all, based on a paucity of liberated thinking among camp females.
With respect to considerations of resettlement, meanwhile, and as these considerations were set
against requirements for repatriation, the picture that emerged was considerably different from that
painted by the Lao and Thai governments on the one hand, and by UNHCR and NGO staff on the other.
These authorities all insisted that refugee women and children had no well-founded fear of persecution,
and that those cases in which husbands, sons, brothers, or fathers did present a convincing case for a wellfounded
fear of persecution, this fear extended neither to female relatives nor to children.
The refugee women of the camps, however, held a different view. While it might be true, they
agreed, that, in cases of repatriation, they were not running the risk of imprisonment or violent death – as
did their men folk – they nevertheless implored the authorities to understand and to appreciate that they
suffered the same degree of fear for their lives, for, without the presence of men in the family, women and
their dependents were vulnerable to a host of ills ranging from poverty and starvation to abduction, sexual
and other forms of abuse, and even death in all its many forms. These fears were very real and very wellfounded,
and yet they were not recognized by those who set refugee policy.
About the Author: Dr. Dia Cha is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Ethnic Studies at Saint
Cloud State University, Saint Cloud, Minnesota.
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