Not many know how it feels to have false evidence heaped against you, to be prosecuted in the absence of a crime, to be given a trial under the pretence of justice, yet the sentence is completely decided upon before you even step into a courtroom.
Seven years ago Australian born business couple, Kay and Kerry Danes discovered the depth of deceit in a country that has pledged itself to upholding united nations mandates when they found themselves hostages in a corrupt power struggle between Lao authorities.
Kay Danes' “Nightmare in Laos: The True Story of a Woman Imprisoned in a Communist Gulag” offers a detailed and personal account of the horrendous injustice and brutal, inhumane treatment of prisoners, that has, over the last three decades under a one-party dictatorship, grossly violated the human rights of thousands.
It was 23rd December 2000 in the city of Vientiane, Laos, that what began as an ordinary day for Kay Danes and her husband Kerry became a 10 month long nightmare from which there was no awakening.
It was on the afternoon of this fateful day that secret police of the corrupt Communist Laos Government kidnapped Kerry, a former Australian SAS officer. Kay, under her husband’s instructions, tried to flee Laos with her two youngest children only to be intercepted at the Thai border.
Torn away from her children, Kay was sent to join her husband in Phonthong Prison, a prison of exceptionally primitive, squalid conditions in rural Laos, without any knowledge of their alleged crime.