Star Tribune
Hmong American activist, comedian kidnapped and killed in Colombia
A highly regarded Hmong American activist, speaker and comedian from the Twin Cities was found dead Monday in Medellín, Colombia, after kidnappers demanded $2,000 in ransom from his family.
Tou Ger Xiong, 50, was killed while on a vacation to Medellín. His brother, Eh Xiong, confirmed his death Tuesday morning on Facebook.
“The pain of his loss is indescribable. We extend our deepest gratitude to all who have offered their condolences, thoughts, and prayers,” Xiong’s family wrote in the Facebook statement.
Xiong, who lived in Woodbury, was kidnapped Sunday after a date with a woman he met on social media, according to the Colombian newspaper El Colombiano.
A group of men contacted his family demanding $2,000 — the equivalent of $8 million in Colombian pesos — and killed him a day later without collecting the money.
Three American tourists, including Xiong, have been murdered in the last month, El Colombiano reported.
Kidnappings in Colombia are on the rise, according to authorities. In the first few months of 2022, 35 people were abducted in the country, and that figure is more than double this year for the same period.
Early last month, the father of a Colombian soccer star was freed after he was held for around a week by a guerrilla group.
Xiong was born in 1973 in Phab Kheb, Laos, one of 11 children in a family that fled the country in 1975 and spent four years in a refugee camp in Thailand before emigrating to the United States, according to Sahan Journal. He grew up in St. Paul and was valedictorian of his class at Humboldt High School in 1992.
Xiong graduated with a political science degree from Carleton College in Northfield in 1996 and began traveling around the country as a motivational speaker, storyteller and rap artist, billing himself as the country’s first Hmong comedian.
Xiong helped organize the first Hmong Minnesota Day at the Minnesota State Fair in 2015, and was named a Bush Fellow in 2019 to earn a master’s degree in public affairs.
With Xiong’s death, the Hmong American community in the Twin Cities has lost a true leader, “consummate organizer and cultural interpreter,” said longtime friend Pakou Hang. In his presentations and writings, she said, Xiong was a teacher who tried to show people how to be kind, generous and do the right thing.
Xiong connected people across generational, cultural and political lines who traveled the United States to speak at schools, colleges and businesses, Hang said. As a friend, he could inspire laughter in every conversation, she said.
Former state Sen. Mee Moua of St. Paul, for whom Xiong worked as a volunteer coordinator in her successful 2002 campaign, said in a statement that she was “weighed down with grief for my friend,” and called Xiong “a one-of-a-kind modern-day hero.”
U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, D-St. Paul wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Xiong’s death was “devastating news” and that his work as a comedian and activist “touched many lives in the Twin Cities and beyond.”
Hang said Xiong would perform skits based on his own stories growing up as a refugee and other lessons from the larger Hmong community. She recalled him bringing older Hmong women onto the stage to demonstrate how they would pick corn or fetch water as children, setting it to music and transforming it into a dance.
Xiong sought to connect first-generation Hmong American kids with classmates of other races, and strengthened intergenerational relationships with their families by making them proud to be Hmong, she said.
Xiong and Hang worked together on many community causes, including the formation of the Coalition for Community Relations, a group that traveled to rural Wisconsin from the Twin Cities in 2004 to “bear witness” at the trial of Chai Soua Vang, a Hmong American man eventually convicted for killing six hunters.
“We’re not here to defend Chai,” Xiong told the Star Tribune at the time. “We’re coming together to accentuate the positives in the Hmong community.”
Xiong also brought media attention to a hunger strike in Northern California in 2021 after a Hmong cannabis farmer was killed by police, Hang said. He flew to California to lead a march and gather stories. Discriminatory ordinances passed by Siskiyou County were later ruled unlawful.
“We don’t have anyone else in the community like that,” Hang said.
This article includes information from Sahan Journal.
The only debate between DFL U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and GOP challenger Royce White started Sunday on the street outside WCCO Radio.
As White approached the building, he loudly called some two dozen flag-waving and cheering Klobuchar supporters a “whole lot of commies.” The 33-year-old provocateur and podcaster also told them to thank Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney — who endorsed Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris — because there was “no chance in hell” that Harris would defeat Republican former President Donald Trump on Nov. 5.
Klobuchar, 64, had arrived moments earlier, smiling and wishing “good morning” to her supporters. Once inside, the two took questions for an hour from moderator Blois Olson. Their tone was generally polite with White often interrupting a Klobuchar response with, “rebuttal,” indicated he wanted to respond.
The senator repeatedly raised White’s claims on X, formerly Twitter, that “The bad guys won in World War II” and that there were “no good guys in that war.” She called that stance offensive to veterans.
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar arrives at WCCO Radio for a debate with Royce White in Minneapolis on Sunday, Oct. 27. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii)
Klobuchar, who is seeking a fourth six-year term, portrayed herself as a pragmatist. She opened by saying that we live in “incredibly divisive times politically” but that she has listened and worked with Republicans to bring down shipping costs, drug prices for seniors and to help veterans and push for more housing and child care.
“Courage in this next few years is not going to be standing by yourself yelling at people,” she said, her opening allusion to White’s rhetoric, which she said is often vulgar.
White, a former NBA player, is a political novice, but a close ally of Steve Bannon, the jailed former chief strategist for Trump and right wing media executive. Last summer, White won the state GOP endorsement to run against Klobuchar.
“Our country’s coming undone at the seams. I think we can change that,” White said in his opening statement. He said he threatens the status quo, decried the “permanent political class” and referred to the two major parties as the “uniparty.”
Other buildings destroyed at Khojir and Parchin likely included buildings where Iran used industrial mixers to create the solid fuel needed for its extensive ballistic missile arsenal, Eveleth said.
In a statement issued immediately after the attack Saturday, the Israeli military said it targeted ”missile manufacturing facilities used to produce the missiles that Iran fired at the state of Israel over the last year.”
Destroying such sites could greatly disrupt Iran’s ability to manufacture new ballistic missiles to replenish its arsenal after the two attacks on Israel. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which oversees the country’s ballistic missile program, has been silent since Saturday’s attack.
Iran’s overall ballistic missile arsenal, which includes shorter-range missiles unable to reach Israel, was estimated to be ”over 3,000” by Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, then-commander of the U.S. military’s Central Command, in testimony to the U.S. Senate in 2022. In the time since, Iran has fired hundreds of the missiles in a series of attacks.
There have been no videos or photos posted to social media of missile parts or damage in civilian neighborhoods following the recent attack — suggesting that the Israeli strikes were far more accurate that Iran’s ballistic missile barrages targeting Israel in April and October. Israel relied on aircraft-fired missiles during its attack.
However, one factory appeared to have been hit in Shamsabad Industrial City, just south of Tehran near Imam Khomeini International Airport, the country’s main gateway to the outside world. Online videos of the damaged building corresponded to an address for a firm known as TIECO, which advertises itself as building advanced machinery used in Iran’s oil and gas industry.
Some take him up on it and fret when he’s not around.
“It is nice to be missed and be part of the school’s culture,” Arzola said. But mostly, he added, he wants kids to know that police aren’t around just for when the bad stuff happens. He’ll hand out his stickers and bracelets, even a trading card bearing his image. Then, they’ll talk about dogs and family.
School resource officer Al Arzola talks to students in his office at John Adams Middle School in Rochester on Oct. 11. (Leila Navidi/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Two months ago, Rochester played host to a three-day training session for new SROs from across the state — an event organized by the Minnesota School Safety Center. On the final day, the 26 officers learned about surveillance challenges at the other school where Arzola works: Dakota Middle School.
It is a beautiful building with a scenic view. There is a lot of glass, too. Arzola, handling the role of instructor and tour guide, took the group outside and noted how one could look straight through the entrance to the large groups that gather inside. There were no curbs in front, either.
“There is nothing stopping any vehicle whatsoever from going through my front doors,” Arzola told the officers. “Law enforcement wasn’t talked to before this building was made. It was kind of like, ‘Here it is. You’re the SRO. Do what you do.’”
He showed them his office, too, which is separate from the main office and near those of other school support staff members. That makes sense, said Jenny Larrive, SRO coordinator for the Minnesota School Safety Center, given than SROs spend more time connecting with youth than on actual law enforcement.
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