Module 2: Hmong American Experiences with War and State Violence
Have Hmong Americans found home in the United States?
Between 1960 and 1975, the United States waged a Secret War in Laos to assist with military and intelligence during the Vietnam War. The war was “secret” in that it was undeclared, and because the American public did not know about it. Waging this war also violated the 1954 Geneva Conventions, which prohibited foreign military intervention into the former French territories of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
This module discusses Hmong involvement in the Secret War, the impact of state secrecy, and ongoing Hmong experiences of state violence through forced migration and policing. Hmong experiences of racism and structural violence—and their resistance to it—are made invisible, overshadowed by narratives of Hmong military allyship with the United States and the “good refugee” model.
Image 11.02.01 — This memorial in Fresno, California, was completed in 2005 to commemorate the Hmong and Lao veterans who sacrificed their lives in service of the US in Vietnam and the “secret war” in Laos.
How was secrecy a war strategy during the American Secret War in Laos, and how has secrecy continued to impact Hmong American experiences?
How do Hmong refugee experiences show the ways that state violence and power operate?
How have Hmong Americans experienced policing after their resettlement in the United States?
War and Secrecy
Under US imperialism in the former French colonies, Hmong and other minority groups such as Mien, Khmu, and Kha were recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to be allies to aid in US military aggression in Southeast Asia (1960–1975). The United States supplied them with World War II-era weaponry with the goal of stopping Communist troops operating in Laos and of intercepting the North Vietnamese at the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which ran through eastern Laos.
The CIA recruited Hmong military leader General Vang Pao, who was a commander in the Royal Lao Army, to lead the “secret army.” At its peak, this “secret army” consisted of forty thousand soldiers, making it one of the largest clandestine CIA military operations. These soldiers provided intelligence, engaged in armed combat, performed rescue missions of American pilots, and took part in many other military duties. General Vang Pao and his army became a US global ally during the Vietnam War.
The United States recruitment of Hmong boys and men as “proxy soldiers” helped to create the illusion of no American military presence in Laos. American soldiers were discharged and re-enrolled as “volunteers,” piloting CIA Air America planes brandishing the Royal Lao Army insignia, erasing any paper trail of the United States as the aggressor.
Text 11.02.03 — A declassified 1962 memorandum for President John F. Kennedy regarding a congressional briefing on Laos. The two-page memo was heavily redacted when it was made available to the public in the 1990s.
In addition, correspondences in the 1960s between the US Pentagon and President John F. Kennedy about military operations in Laos were classified and kept hidden from the American public until the 1990s, when Freedom of Information Act requests forced the government to release records. Although the requests were specifically to obtain information about Kennedy’s assassination, many records contained documents regarding the political situation in Laos. Even though these records became declassified and available to the public, they were heavily redacted, leaving wide gaps in information.
Image 11.02.04 — The Royal Lao Army insignia on a US plane. US T-28D planes were employed for training Hmong pilots and flying bombing missions in Laos, representing the US subterfuge about its “secret war.”
Militarization and Policing
As Hmong refugees rebuilt their lives with their American-born children, their experiences have been impacted by policing. The “good refugee” framing only told part of their story; at times, they were also seen as the “bad refugee” who has the tendency to commit violence. Part of the tendency toward violence came from the history of Hmong soldiering, which have often stereotyped Hmong as primitive warriors who were skilled fighters. Even though few Americans know about the history of Hmong people’s relationship with the United States, the limited information has provided a one-dimensional view that paints Hmong men as predisposed to violence.
Consider the case of Chai Soua Vang, the Hmong American man who killed six white hunters in northern Wisconsin in 2004 after he had unknowingly wandered onto their property. In the media, Vang was depicted as a skilled killer. The context of racial terror in which one Hmong American man faced eight hostile white hunters was ignored, as was the context of racial tensions around property and belonging. What became amplified was Vang’s swift reflexes and marksmanship at shooting–skills attributed to the fact that Vang had served in the US National Guard and had come from a Hmong American community that had served as proxy soldiers for the United States. Vang was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
In other cases, Hmong American boys have faced criminalization at school when they were surveilled as potential gang members by school officials in the school yard and by the police when walking home from school. Fong Lee, a Hmong American teenager, was killed by Minneapolis police in 2006 when he and some friends rode bikes near an elementary school. The police officers presumed criminal activity and chased Lee and his friends. The officer who killed Lee shot him in the back and planted a gun on him in order to claim self-defense. These examples of racial terror and policing show the criminalization of Hmong tendency toward violence that is linked to militarization, the process of organizing and supplying military materials to people and/or a region.
The intersections between militarization and policing for Hmong Americans became more complicated when police officers from Minneapolis, Minnesota, killed George Floyd on May 25, 2020. Americans watched in shock the video footage of police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of hand-cuffed Floyd for over eight minutes, resulting in his death. The videos also showed the other three officers present at the scene. One of the officers was an Hmong American—Tou Thao, who was seen managing the gathering crowd of witnesses but did not intervene on behalf of Floyd to stop his fellow officer’s use of excessive force. Floyd’s death ushered nation-wide protests against policing and anti-Black violence and demands for justice for Floyd.
Many Asian Americans on social media condemned Thao for being a docile model minority because he did not intervene. Complicit in Floyd’s death, Thao served as an ally to the institution of policing and state-sanctioned violence even though policing has historically sought to diversify its institution by recruiting from communities of color to police their own communities. Hmong American activists who joined in the demands for justice for Floyd called for Hmong Americans to refuse allyship with policing and anti-Black racism.
In doing so, Hmong American activists made connections between allyship with policing and Hmong allyship with the United States during the Secret War and helped us to understand the intersecting impacts of militarization and policing. By extension, we can consider the image of the docile model minority as more than a set of “positive” stereotypes about Asian people’s success, but a form of racism that disciplines Asian Americans to align with state institutions.
In summary, the circumstances of war and secrecy not only hid Hmong political motivations and impacted their lives in Laos, they made historical experiences of war violence unthinkable and experiences of racism invisible. In addition to long-term physical impairments, Hmong also experience ongoing erasure of their experiences within institutions that are supposed to help, but that continue to cause hardship and more deaths.
Image 11.02.05 — NBC News covered a rally against the 2021 police murder of Hmong American farmer Soobleej Kaub Hawj as he fled the Lava Fire in Siskiyou County. Activists claim the sixty times Hawj was shot belies the officers’ claim that he was the aggressor.
Glossary terms in this module
Indigenous Where it’s used
Refers to people who were the original inhabitants of the land, predating colonialism, for whom land is a source of knowledge, resource, and cultural and spiritual connection. Indigenous peoples maintain sovereignty by resisting colonial power.
resettlement Where it’s used
The transferring of refugees from an asylum country to another state, where they are ultimately given permanent residence.
Secret War Where it’s used
During the Vietnam War, the US Central Intelligence Agency conducted a covert operation, where the US militarily-supported Hmong and other ethnic groups in Laos to combat North Vietnamese forces and the Communist Pathet Lao. From 1964 to 1973 the United States dropped more than two million tons of bombs, which the American public did not learn about until the 1990s and 2000s.
