FOR SEVEN YEARS, the fate and whereabouts of Sombath Somphone, a prominent civil society leader, a community development worker, and a human rights defender, remain undisclosed by the Lao government. Sombath was forcibly disappeared in Vientiane on 15 December 2012. His disappearance was recorded in a police surveillance video, when police stopped him in his vehicle at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Vientiane.