Photo provided by citizen journalist Cambodia’s Friday Wives and Laos’ Murky Legal System Citizens who criticize the Lao government are forcibly disappeared or arrested without due process, and endure harsh treatment and lengthy prison terms, experts said on the anniversary of key United Nations human rights pacts that the communist nation has ratified but regularly violates. Human Rights Day Thursday marks the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the UN General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1948. Laos, whose one-party communist government marked its 45th anniversary on Dec. 2, ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and other key U.N. rights instruments in the 1990s, but the rights commitments are not honored, rights experts and activists say.