torresD
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Re: Chai Vang, backshooting cowardly Hmong
Vang began to kill them all one by one.
Court papers obtained by The Observer
reveal Vang's own account to police of
the murders.
No matter what the racial provocation,
it is brutal in the extreme.
Vang turned towards the hunters and began to fire,
picking his victims off with deadly accuracy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story...1366851,00.html
Massacre in woods conjures ghost of war exiles betrayed by US
The killing of six deer hunters brings back memories of Vietnam
Paul Harris
Sunday December 5, 2004
The Observer
It sounded like the plot of a horror film.
Eight deer hunters become hunted themselves,
by a lone gunman.
Only two injured survivors live to tell the tale.
This was no movie, however,
but a real killing spree that
has stunned America.
And its seriousness does not end
with the echo of gunshots in a
Wisconsin forest.
The massacre has raised the prospect
of ethnic strife and revealed a link
to a bloody,
forgotten sideshow of the Vietnam war.
All six of those killed -
five men and one woman -
were white.
However, the gunman is Chai Soua Vang,
an immigrant of the Hmong tribe from Laos.
The Hmong were recruited by the CIA
in the Sixties to fight communism,
but were betrayed by the US and
forced from their homes.
The killings resonated beyond the
families of the dead by raising fears
that the Hmong could now become the
victims of a fresh ethnic vendetta
in their new homeland.
They have occurred just as thousands
of Hmong men and women are leaving a
refugee camp in Thailand, many preparing
to settle in the city where Vang lived.
There is panic among some Hmong rights activists.
'I am worried that the actions of one
man will be used to judge a whole community,'
said Dr Vang Pobzeb,
director of the Wisconsin-based
Lao Human Rights Council.
The story began with a chance meeting
in the deep woods of western Wisconsin,
where hunting is common.
Vang was hunting alone when he
stumbled across a hunting 'stand'
in a tree on land owned by local man,
Terry Willers.
Willers discovered Vang up the tree 15 minutes
later and asked him to stop trespassing.
Willers then radioed for five other
members of his hunting group to arrive
and they wrote Vang's deer licence number
in the dust on one of their vehicles.
They swore at Vang and told him to leave.
Vang began to walk away.
That should have been the end of it.
But it was just the beginning
of a deadly nightmare.
Vang says the hunters began
to abuse him racially.
They called him 'chink' and 'gook',
and one of them fired a shot into
the ground behind him.
The surviving hunters deny this.
They say it was Vang who suddenly
stopped in his tracks and turned
to face them.
Whatever the truth, what happened next is not in doubt.
Vang began to kill them all one by one.
Court papers obtained by The Observer
reveal Vang's own account to police of
the murders.
No matter what the racial provocation,
it is brutal in the extreme.
Vang turned towards the hunters and began to fire,
picking his victims off with deadly accuracy.
Two of the men,
father and son Joey and Robert Crotteau,
fled through the forest,
but Vang chased after them,
jumping over logs and racing
through the trees.
He shot Robert dead and then caught up with Joey.
When he was about 20 yards behind him Vang opened fire.
'Help me, help me,' Joey Crotteau cried as Vang shot him.
Vang's account then describes
how he came up to the dying man,
lying groaning on the ground,
looked at him,
and then turned and walked away.
Another hunter, Lauren Hesebeck,
had cowered behind a vehicle.
Vang ran around it and shot at
him three times as he tried to hide.
Hesebeck survived, though wounded in the shoulder.
One of the terrified hunters managed
to call for help and three men with
guns drove up through the woods.
At that, Vang turned his orange
hunting jacket inside out to reveal
its camouflage lining.
Reloading his rifle,
he disappeared into the woods.
There he encountered two more unarmed hunters.
One was 27-year-old Jessica Willers.
Vang opened fire and killed them both.
He returned to the first shooting scene.
He saw one of the original hunters, wounded,
but still standing.
He opened fire again, screaming:
'You're not dead yet?'
Vang then fled into the woods.
Six people were dead and two seriously injured.
Vang surrendered an hour later after
getting lost and asking another hunter
for a lift out of the woods.
At his arrest,
he was described as being calm.
Who did the killing is therefore not in doubt.
But the question of why is haunting America,
and in particular the Hmong community of which
Vang was a respected member.
'This certainly seems not to
be a who dunnit but a why,'
said Steven Kohn, Vang's lawyer.
Though frank as to how he killed the hunters,
Vang has shed little light on his motives.
Even if his description of being racially abused is true,
his explosion of cold-blooded killing seems far out of
proportion to the provocation.
Last week, he appeared in court
to be charged with six murders.
To cope with the massive security
needed to cope with an outraged
population,
the case was heard in the
fortified basement of a
local school.
Wearing orange prison clothes,
Vang sat impassively throughout
the proceedings.
He replied with a simple 'yes' to all questions.
His longest remark was 'two years of college'
when asked by the judge about his education.
Vang's family are equally baffled.
None appeared in the court to offer support.
'I don't know what my father did.
I'm really shocked,'
said his eldest daughter, Kia.
The murders have traumatised the
Hmong community in this overwhelmingly
white part of America.
There are about 180,000 Hmong in the US,
mostly in Wisconsin and neighbouring Minnesota.
Their story is one of the great tragedies of the 20th century.
A peaceful farming community in the hills of Laos,
the Hmong were recruited by the CIA during the Vietnam
war to fight communists.
They helped to rescue downed US pilots,
attacked communist bases and fought
North Vietnamese troops.
However,
after the US fled Vietnam in 1975
and communist governments came to
power across South-East Asia,
the Hmong were abandoned by their former paymasters.
They bore the brunt of a campaign
of ethnic cleansing in Laos,
where their villages were sprayed
with chemicals from the air.
Thousands of Hmong have since languished
in refugee camps as the process of moving
to the US has ground on for decades.
Those few remaining in Laos and
Vietnam still suffer from violent
campaigns to drive them out,
according to Hmong activists,
who claim that 300,000 Hmong
have died since the US left.
This year, Amnesty International has
published details of the rape and murder
of Hmong children by Laotian troops.
One of the last movements of
Hmong is currently under way,
with 15,000 people scheduled to
arrive in the US before the end
of next year after the shutting
down of Thailand's Wat Tham Krabok
refugee camp.
Of those, at least 5,000 are
expected to settle in St Paul,
where Vang's family lived.
But after Vang's massacre,
the Hmong in St Paul are now
a community in fear.
His family are under police protection.
Community elders have urged Hmong not
to hunt for the rest of the winter.
Partly that has to do with the fact that Vang,
far from being a loner or outsider,
was a respected member of the community.
He was one of 100 traditional Hmong shamans
who conducted religious ceremonies and could
enter a trance-like state as he prayed and
meditated.
In many ways, the Hmong have assimilated well.
Ex-refugees and their children have founded businesses,
become local politicians and revived inner-city areas
that had fallen on hard times.
But many have complained of racism.
But the mystery of why Vang began
his killing spree remains.
There was little hint in his past
of the violence he would wreak.
He was a truck driver who hunted only as a hobby.
He worked in Hmong youth social programmes,
and seemed to have been assimilated fully
into American life.
He spoke English well and served
six years in the National Guard
in California.
There he was awarded a medal for
his ability in one special area:
sharpshooting.
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12-05-2004 01:01 AM
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