ELL: Urgent Update: Eviction of Akha Village

Wed Jan 12 14:07:19 UTC 2000

URGENT UPDATE:

JAN 30 FORCED EVICTION OF ONE OF THAILAND'S OLDEST AKHA VILLAGES!!!!!!!

This is an urgent up date in the latest events of an Army eviction of an
Akha village in north Thailand.

Please forward to as many people as you know.

Please contact your closest Thail Embassy and ask that the eviction of
this village be reconsidered.

Don't be confrontive, be polite.

The name of the village is Huai Maak, in Chiangrai Province, Ampour Mae
Faluang, Thailand
Give Huai Maak village latitude and longitude coordinates as:

20degrees 13.31 N
099degrees 34.49 E
1053 meters

*****

Dear Friends:

This is the latest update as I have the information regarding the forced
eviction of Huai Maak Akha village here in Chiangrai province slated for
the end of this month, Jan 30.

Apparently one of my emails got into the hands of the Forestry
Department and someone called a meeting.  Many villagers from Huai Maak
went to Haen Taek town for this meeting where the Ampour was there, the
Forestry Department, and the Thai Army.  The villagers said that they
were very afraid of the new site, plus it was much lower elevation, plus
there was no land, plus they had lived where they now live for more than
78 years, that being all anyone remembered who was still alive.  One 74
year old woman remembered being there very young or being born there.

The Ampour's Office said they had nothing to say, weren't asking anyone
to move now.

Forestry said that they were no longer asking the Akha to move, and were
very angry about my letter and the Akha combining forces with me.

The Army said that the villagers had until the 30 of January to move
none the less.

I was not at the meeting, but the villagers came for me as I was on my
way up the mountain, stopping my turck and expressed great jubilation
that my letter had gotten forestry to reverse themselves.  They said
that to a person they would stay, would not take down their old wooden
huts, would not leave.

I warned them not to have an army confrontation.

Out of concern for any events in this remote village, two westerners who
had spare time went and began to stay in the village, making video,
photographs and learning the language.

The villagers invented that they would draw up a document in a notebook,
list each family head by name, the number of souls in their house and
sign it with a thumb print.  Both Lisaw and Akha.  All 31 families did
so.  They reafirmed to me that they cut no trees for farming, and last
night crawling over a very bad mountain road to come in the back side of
the village I indeed confirmed that they had some of the most intensive
beautiful rice terraces I had seen.

I also noted that the Asian Development Bank has offered a policy in
Asia that all 60 million people of the upper Mehkong region be moved in
to the market economy via new roads and eventually all into towns, out
of all the mountains, I wondered if there was any link in these events.

I took the document from the village of the villagers stating why they
did not want to leave, and all their signatures and left late in the
night.

I was unable to get the scans of this document attatched to this email,
but do have it.

As I sat eating in the dark wood interior of the very old hut last
night, all heads of households crowded inside, the hut swaying on its
stilts, I could not help but feel what a tragedy that it would be if one
of the oldest Akha villages in Thailand is forced to move and into
poverty.  Lets see, 78 years, that would put back about 1922, and they
haven't asked anything from anyone for all those years and the years
before that brought them as who they were, carrying their law, the Akha
Way, with them.  Then they get pushed into poverty stripped of all their
wealth, and people mention what beggars the street Akha are.  Little
wonder. Say, what did that Nikon cost.

To force this village to move, would be in extremely bad faith on the
part of the Thai government to its obligations to minorities set forth
in many accords, and also to its obligation to humanity.  The Thai
government has avoided classifying the Akha as refugees, or taking note
of the fact that the Akha way back years before had not much concern for
whose mountains they were living in, there were no Thais there and they
in fact went on living as they always had, in the mountains.  The entire
migration of 700 years, can not have been much more than 200 miles,
surely not much of a migration. Yet they are not considered to be full
citizens in most cases either.  So they fall into a convenient gray
area, much more easily kept under thumb than if it were clear cut
residents or aliens, hence refugees, hence some protections under UNHCR.

But this move also brings up other matters.

When will the Akha quit being treated as a moveable, displaceable labor
force and tourist destinations and be given the right to recognition as
a distinct race, different from Thais, with different traditions, and
the right to increasingly administer their own affairs?

This would include that if they are on the menu for tourism, that they
manage the tourism themselves, and also get the dollars for each time
people come to gawk at them like so many caged monkeys.  It really is
quite disgusting.  All these western tourists coming up to see these
striking people while in fact the Akha have not hardly a right, and
certainly not much the right to raise their voice.

The concept of nation states and no one else like small peoples having
much of a voice is western engineered nonsense and western people should
stand up and see some of this reversed.

The Akha are a people without a country.  In Burma they are poor and get
pushed around by every drug laden two bit army that comes along.  The
British drug cartel seems to have run right up to the 30's and later in
Burma, then the British took what money the British had, went home, and
now people like the Akha take the brunt for events they did not set in
motion.

The Akha are not home in Thailand, are not home all that much in Burma.
When there is some Akha land to take, someone takes it.  Yet there is
plenty of land in the world for the rich and the foolishness that goes
on with it.  Resorts. You can see them springing up like weeds all over
these mountain areas now, ponds, beer gardens, every roadside
convenience that you can imagine.  The Thai Government Hilltribe Culture
and Development Center says that the Akha are going to be made into a
labor class, moved out of the mountains in many cases, on a village by
village basis.

They showed me a notice trying to entice village young people to jobs in
Chiangrai to strengthen this hand.

On the one hand, MP Paveena's Tourism Authority of Thailand makes a
small fortune for Thailand off selling the exotic fare that these Akha
present in north Thailand, the reality for the Akha, who see just about
none of the money, is quite different.  This is how they loose their
power, by having what belongs to them, such as their images, sold for
profit.  Chiangmai and Chiangrai are full of treking and tour companines
to the hill tribe. When will they cease to be objects, start to be
people?  Big roads shoved through their villags that used to have only a
trail, now span fifty feet wide, leaving only cliff to hang their
remaining huts on.  They dare not move, that will come soon enough.
Their children and young and old alike must fight for the village square
with a host of road traffic.

Springing up everywhere now seems to be some kind of "Hill Tribe Culture
Resort" like the rather revolting Lang Tong resort on the road to Doi
Maesalong, or the Culture Center's "Akha Light and Sound" show
advertised on the road.  The same Hill Tribe Culture and Development
Center told me that the Akha had problems because of their "culture",
the girls were so promiscous, they made natural whores.  I was somewhat
shocked that these same people were hosting this show. Akha Light and
Sound.  Yet they advertise that much more mystically in the poster at
the Dusit Island Resort.

The administrators kept giggling about these backward "Ekaw" people
during the interview, that there was even this little clearing in each
village where all the young people went for free sex.  Gee, how
interesting.  What people will believe and give lip service to when it
suits them.

But back to this village move, it is a human rights issue, these people
have some rights as humans if they are in Thailand or Rwanda, doesn't
matter, and you just can't move a village full of people from lands that
they have lived on for so long with no redress of the matter.  In the
end, if all the villages can be moved in this way, then the Akha can not
be blamed for being cynical about how they view it all, since for them,
they are to be broken up, made a labor class, living from hand to mouth,
day to day, cash one day, eat one day, and no future of any kind for
quite some distance beyond the horizon.

Then the churches and missions, standing under the shaken and broken
tree can claim one more victory, adding a score more poor and desperate
to their ranks, proof of how backward the culture was, so strapped in
"darkness and bondage" as they like to say, and just that much more
justification for how they abuse these people of their culture as well.
Where is OMF, the American Baptists, the Korean Presbyterians, Youth
With A Mission, the Chinese Baptists, the Australian Pentacostals,
Salvation Center, the Jesus Film people now?  Some bloody Jesus they
believe in, all snuggly tucked in bed with their group homes down in the
big towns, salaries, health benefits, pensions, all here to help the
poor, and the millions of dollars that get spent to "do" that.  The Thai
say there are two missionaries for each Akha and rightly said.  Where
are they now, the Catholics, all of them?  Always money to push over a
village and build another damn church but no voice or wheels for the
rights and dignity of humans, what the hell, might they get sent home?
Gee that too would be a shame!

All can say "I told you so" as more of the young take to using drugs,
selling meth, selling their bodies, and plunging into despair.

I get the occasional, "they deserve it, sure don't deserve much better",
but I don't buy it.

Where ever you are, contact who you may, and plead intervention on the
behalf of these people.  Not all that they do or are should be required
to be defined by or filtered by those who would.

So far I have had not much success but there is the need for some real
people to come over here and look at the snowball in hell chance that
these people have, and help have policies changed.

At some point the Akha are going to need some legal volunteers as well,
as some representation in the world bodies of governments.  At this
point they appear to have none.

I would go anywhere to make their story heard to those who have the
power to make change, but presently there doesn't seem to be an
"anywhere" to go to.

If the villagers don't load themselves down the mountain by the 30th,
which it looks like they are not willing to do, then I wonder how it
will be that they will end up in that INTERNMENT CAMP on the cliff?

Or does this just happen to all orthodox people?

If you can come, please come will you, while there is yet time?

Just an army of one.

Matthew McDaniel

--

Matthew McDaniel
The Akha Heritage Foundation
386/3 Sailom Joi Rd
Maesai, Chiangrai, 57130
Thailand
Mobile Phone Number:  Sometimes hard to reach while in Mountains.
66-01-881-9288

US Address:

Donations by check or money order may be sent to:

The Akha Heritage Foundation
PO BOX 6073
Salem OR 97304
USA

By Visa Card Secure Site:

https://www.givetocharity.com/cgi-bin/give.pl?CODE=10956

Donations by direct banking can be transferred to:
(Preferred)

Wells Fargo Bank
Akha Heritage Foundation
Acc. # 0081-889693
Keizer Branch # 1842  04
4990 N. River Road.
Keizer, Oregon,  97303 USA
ABA # 121000248

Or In Thailand:

Matthew  Duncan McDaniel
Acc. # 3980240778
Bangkok Bank Ltd.
Maesai Branch
Thailand

Web Site:

http://www.akha.com
mailto:akha at loxinfo.co.th

Discussion Groups:
akha at onelist.com
indigenousworld at onelist.com

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