Pathet Lao Seize Power: Laos Becomes Communist

Pathet Lao forces seized the Laotian capital of Vientiane on December 2, 1975, compelling King Sisavang Vatthana to abdicate and proclaiming the Lao People's Democratic Republic. The communist takeover completed the domino sequence across Indochina that American foreign policy had spent two decades and billions of dollars trying to prevent. Saigon had fallen in April. Phnom Penh had fallen to the Khmer Rouge in the same month. Now Vientiane, the sleepy capital on the Mekong River, became the third Indochinese capital to change hands in 1975. The Pathet Lao had fought a civil war against the Royal Lao Government since the 1950s, supported by North Vietnamese troops who used Laotian territory as a supply corridor along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The United States conducted a secret bombing campaign against the trail from 1964 to 1973, dropping over two million tons of ordnance on Laos, making it the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. Many of the cluster bomblets failed to detonate and continue to kill and maim Laotian farmers and children decades later. The Pathet Lao takeover ended six centuries of monarchy. King Sisavang Vatthana and his family were sent to reeducation camps in the northeast, where they are believed to have died, though the government has never confirmed the circumstances. The new regime aligned Laos firmly within Vietnam's sphere of influence and established a one-party state that has governed continuously since 1975. Over three hundred thousand Laotians fled the country in the following years, many settling in the United States, France, and Australia.