Laos
Appeal of the Second International Conference of Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin
Hanoi, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
By Pierre Rousset
September 9, 2009 -- ESSF -- The communist movement was first established in Siam (renamed Thailand in 1939) mostly in the Chinese ethnic migrant communities, then proliferated in the seemingly disparate surrounding regions in the north, northeast and south of the country. Following a long, difficult period of transition, the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), once an urban party, retreated to the jungle and engaged in armed struggle. Its national expansion, during the 1970s, occurred while the kingdom was transformed into a US base for military intervention in the Vietnam War. The party eventually saw its decline during the Sino-Indochinese conflict of 1978–9 and disappeared from sight in the mid-1980s.
Announcing conference in Hanoi, 7-8 October 2008: "Problems in Contemporary
Socioeconomic Theory" sponsored by Nature, Society and Thought and the Ho