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Territory in southeast Asia, ruled since 1975 by the Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao

Laos (Lao: ລາວ, Lāo), officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ, translit. Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, French: République démocratique populaire lao), commonly referred to by its colloquial name of Muang Lao (Lao: ເມືອງລາວ, Muang Lao), is a socialist state and the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia at the heart of the Indochinese peninsula, bordered by Myanmar (Burma) and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the southwest and Thailand to the west and southwest.

Geographical type: Territory

Latitude: 18° N — Longitude: 105° E

Area: 237,955 km²

ISO 3166-2 code: LA

Measures of Freedom

Human Freedom Index [PDF], The Human Freedom Index 2021
2019: 5.85, Rank: 136, Personal Freedom: 5.3, Economic Freedom: 6.6
Laos | Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2022
2016: Status: Not Free, Aggregate Score: 12, Political Rights: 7, Civil Liberties: 6
The Lao government in 2015 continued to pursue an economic opening while tightening its control over political space. Although the country has achieved high growth rates overall, inequality is growing sharply as well, fueling public discontent. The authorities appeared increasingly attentive to criticism on social media during the year. Officials detained citizens for contentious posts and seemed concerned about the country's image ahead of its 2016 chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Level of Economic Freedom, Economic Freedom of the World
2014: 6.85, Rank: 91

Articles

Improve the CIA? Better to abolish it, by Chalmers Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle, 22 Feb 2004
Lists countries where the CIA conducted subversive operations and recommends abolishing the agency.
Since the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953, the CIA has engaged in similar disguised assaults on the governments of Guatemala (1954); the Congo (1960); Cuba (1961); Brazil (1964); Indonesia (1965); Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (1961-73); Greece (1967); Chile (1973); Afghanistan (1979 to the present); El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua (1980s); and Iraq (1991 to the present) -- to name only the most obvious cases.
The Lethal Legacy of U.S. Foreign Intervention, by Sheldon Richman, 12 Feb 2014
Presents examples of the deadly lasting effects of U.S. foreign intervention: continuing sectarian conflicts in Iraq and unexploded bombs in Laos
[Consider] what's happening today in Laos, in southeast Asia. The U.S. military bombed Laos from 1964 to 1973, during its war on Vietnam, to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh trail ... which ran through Laos and Cambodia. According to the website Legacies of War, "the U.S. dropped over 2 million tons of ordnance over Laos in 580,000 bombing missions, the equivalent of one planeload every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years." That would have been bad enough, but the U.S. government dropped cluster bombs, which are made up of many so-called bomblets, about 30 percent of which did not explode immediately ...

The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "Laos" as of 3 Oct 2018, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.