Population: 6.5 million
Capital: Vientiane
Government type: Communist state
Religion: Ethnoreligionist 49%; Buddhist 43%; Christian 2.8%

Communist vestige

Laos is one of the last remaining Communist states and as such has struggled to find its place in today's world.

After six centuries of having a monarchy, Laos fell to Communist forces in 1975 and the Communist Pathet Lao guerrillas seized power.

The end of the Soviet empire left Laos politically isolated and it began engaging with the international community from the 1990s onwards.

Yet, despite economic reform and liberalisation, Laos still has only one legal political party -- the Lao People's Revolutionary Party. The government maintains a tight grip on society and regularly tramples on religious rights.

Laos remains one of the world’s least developed nations, widely covered by tropical forest.

Double-speak

The Laotian constitution provides for religious freedom yet its authoritarian regime maintains firm control over all religious activity.

The constitution likewise bans religious persecution -- and yet it is the government itself which organises harassment of religious minorities.

At a general level, religious groups must gain state approval for such things as evangelism, printing religious literature, and owning or building places of worship. Foreign evangelists and foreign religious literature are not even allowed through customs.

At a more personal level, Christians report having been forced at gunpoint to renounce their faith. Others have been put in prison without trial or had their property seized.

Seditious faith

The state openly encourages Buddhism and Buddhist organisations: Christianity is seen as a threat to national unity.

So Christians refusing to take part in state-organised religious events are seen as seditious; evangelists have been charged with treason.

The government recognises only three churches: the Lao Evangelical Church (LEC), the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Yet, even some of these churches have been oppressed.

Between 1999 and 2001, the authorities shut down at least 85 LEC churches across the country. A thaw in the government’s relations with the church in recent years has seen many of the churches which had been closed being reopened.

But persecution continues. The government found itself a new target in 2005 in the form of the Bru tribal Christians in the south of Savannakhet province. In one raid, believers were reportedly tied to posts and tortured with red ants to make them recant their faith.

RI projects

RI's work in Laos includes:

• Supporting negotiations which resulted in the release of three teenage North Korean refugees from the custody of the Laotian authorities. The three were subsequently transported to South Korea.

Sources: BBC; International Christian Concern; Operation World; Release International; The World Factbook 2007; World Christian Database.

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