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David Bradley
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Date: Sat, 20 Mar 1999 09:49:15 +1100
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From: d.bradley at latrobe.edu.au (David Bradley)
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From: "Paul W. Lewis" <pwlewis at juno.com>
REPLY BY PAUL W. LEWIS
I have received an article from the Akha News Service, Maesai, Chiangrai,
Thailand which accuses me of several things. I would like to reply to
these accusations, and trust that my reply will receive the same coverage
as the allegations received.
REPLY SUMMARY
1. ALLEGATION: Paul Lewis had more than 20,000 Akha women from
Burma
sterilized.
FACT: I helped between 300 and 350 Akha women from Burma
receive
an operation they greatly wanted and needed. They were most
anxious to
have the operation because they could not take care of the
children they
already had.
2. ALLEGATION: The project was done secretly.
FACT: The program to help tribal families was carried out under
the auspices of the McCormick Hospital Family Planning Program based
in
Chiang Mai, with full authorization from Thai authorities. Citizens of
Burma regularly come over to Thailand to receive the health assistance
that is not available there.
3. ALLEGATION: The women did not know the long term effects on their
bodies.
FACT: A Thai woman doctor trained at Johns Hopkins Medical
School
used the latest methods - the same as used in the USA. The long term
effects for those women would be much the same as women who have the
same
operation in this country, with the exception that their living
conditions are much, much worse.
4. ALLEGATION: Blood was stolen from these women for resale.
FACT: This is the most obscene statement that could possibly
be
made, and totally false. Surely such activities would have
been found by
alert authorities in Thailand, who monitored the whole
program. A local
anesthetic was used, and there was an IV drip started well
before the
operation, and continued during, and after the
operation. Blood was not
drawn, except in a few of the early cases to check for
malaria. We found
so many of the women from Burma had malaria that we no longer
bothered to
check, but simply gave a full course of malaria medicine to
each woman
from Burma, as well as to accompanying members of her family,
when they
arrived at the hospital.
5. ALLEGATION: Of the 20,000 women sterilized more than 3,000
have died.
FACT: Since there were not more than 350 Akha women
from Burma
who received the operation, for over 3,000 of them to die is
totally
impossible, and reveals something of the lengths the author is
going to
in order to discredit the program.
REPLIES TO SPECIFIC STATEMENTS IN THE ARTICLE
1. "Paul Lewis sterilized more than 20,000 Akha Hill Tribe
women in
Burma's Eastern Shan State alone."
As part of a family planning program I helped to conduct for the
Lahu, Akha and Lisu tribal groups of Thailand, at their urgent request,
we began to offer sterilization to those couples who did not want to
have
more children. They knew very well that they would not have more
children
following the operation - there was full disclosure and full
consent. It
was explained to them in their own language, and hundreds of couples
came
for help.
There was fully informed consent in every aspect of the program
-
as an anthropologist and as a follower of Jesus Christ this was a top
priority for me. The local committees which I helped organize to guide
and oversee the tribal family planning program (one Akha, one Lisu and
two Lahu committees) decided that only couples with two living children
should be accepted for sterilization, and then only if they lived near
medical facilities. For those couples who lived further away from good
health care centers, they felt we should not sterilize any couple that
had less than three living children.
During the early years of the program we provided family
planning
service for Lahu, Akha and Lisu in Thailand. After we had been
conducting
the program for a year or two, several tribal people from Kengtung
State
in Burma (both Lahu and Akha) came to ask if they could receive the
same
help, since it was not available in their country, and they were
desperate. I checked with the Chief Medical Officer in Chiang Rai
Province and he said, "We do not ask 'Where are you from?', but 'Where
does it hurt?' Of course they can come. We already serve hundreds of
patients from Burma every month in the hospitals in Mae Sai and Chiang
Rai." I knew this to be true, since I was often asked to translate for
the people from Burma.
Over the last four years of our seven year six month program we
began to accept couples from Burma to receive sterilization. A
very
skilled Thai woman doctor, who received her training in sterilization
at
Johns Hopkins Medical School, would travel with her team to a modern
Government hospital in Phayao the last Friday and Saturday of each
month.
Her brother was the Director of that hospital. She would give
sterilizations to the tribal women who came from Thailand, and then
later
from Burma as well. She always did it in a spirit of love and
compassion.
Since all of this happened some 20 years ago I do not have all of the
figures with me in Claremont, CA, but I do know that in the total
program
there were fewer than 3,000 (three thousand) women who received the
operation as a part of our program. As I recall the number was 2,978.
There were approximately 64 men who had vasectomies as part of our
program. [Note: All of the statistical material I produced has been
turned over to the Akha people in Burma and Thailand. There would also
be
some statistics in the Family Planning files of McCormick Hospital, but
in those figures we did not separate the patients by tribal group or
place of residence.]
Of the 2,978 sterilizations, about half of them were done in
Chiang Mai. The operations done there were for tribal couples living in
Thailand. We only accepted couples from Burma in the Phayao Hospital, and
later in a Lahu village in Chiang Rai Province which was nearer to tribal
villages (Akha, Lisu and Lahu) and closer to the Burma border. I would
presume that Dr. Arunee Fongsri performed roughly 1,500 sterilizations in
Chiang Rai Province, either using the laparascope or performing
mini-laparotamies. Of those 1,500 cases a little less than half of the
patients were from Burma (roughly 750). If my memory serves me correctly,
about 40% of these would be Akha (that is, about 300 women), 45% were
Lahu, and the other 15% were Lisu, Kachin, Tai Loi, Shan, etc. Just to
make sure I do not understate the total, let me estimate that up to 350
Akha women from Burma received sterilization in our program.
Logistically speaking it would have been impossible for us to
perform the number of operations claimed by the Akha Heritage
Foundation.
Dr. Arunee Fongsri would perform the operation on about 35-40 women
the
last Friday and Saturday of each month, ten months out of the
year. Even
if all of the women she operated on for a four year period were Akha
women from Burma, that would still be just 400 women per year, or a
total
of approximately 1,600 over that time - much less than the 20,000
claimed. But they were not the only ones coming. They represented
about
40% of the ones who came, although I do recall one trip when the Akha
women from Burma constituted approximately half of all of those
receiving
the operation. That large a percent of Akha women from Burma did not
happen very often, however.
2. "This project was done secretly without the approval of the Burmese
Government by requiring the women to come into Thailand for the
procedure
. Government leaders in this region of Burma now know about the
project
and say that it was illegal in that it did not have Burmese government
approval or proper documentation that the rights of the women were not
being violated."
When people along the border of Burma are sick or need to see a
doctor, they do not need to get approval from the Burmese government
to
seek help in Thailand. At the time of our project family planning was
virtually illegal in Burma, except for military officers and their
families. Medical care and medicines were extremely difficult to
obtain,
which increased the problems tribal families faced as many couples had
a
baby every two years or less. They pleaded with us for help!
3. The term is used, ".they had little education as to what the long
term
effect on their lives would be."
We followed up many of the women who had the operation, and
found
very good results from the operation itself. The sterilization
they
received (whether by the $10,000 laparascope or by the simpler
but just
as effective mini-laparotomy) is the VERY SAME that American
women
receive! There was one Lahu woman from Thailand who had a
"bleeder"
following the operation, but this was taken care of before it
became
serious.
In the hills of eastern Burma many women die in child
birth. I
know. I have driven many tribal women (Lahu, Akha, Wa) having
trouble
giving birth to a hospital so that their lives could be
saved. The long
term effect of not having the operation was often death!
Also, we found that almost all of the women coming
from Burma had
malaria. At first we only gave malaria medicine to those who
were having
an active case. As time went by we changed and gave EACH OF
THEM a full
course of malaria medicine the moment they arrived in Phayao,
since most
of them had it in their system. They were most grateful for
this. One
Lahu woman who had the operation came back about a year later
bringing
her sister for the operation, and said that she had not had a
malarial
attack since we gave her the medicine when she had come for
her surgery.
I should mention here that I was deeply concerned about the
long
term effect of all family planning methods. That is one of the
reasons I
worked to receive a Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology from the
University of
Oregon. Also, our program had wonderful backing from McCormick
Hospital
in Chiang Mai in all of these matters. The world-renowned
family planning
expert, Dr. Edwin McDaniel, was advisor to the project, and it
was their
program that lent the excellent services of Dr. Arunee Fongsri
to us. At
the time, she had performed over 50,000 sterilizations in
Thailand, and
was very highly thought of by the whole medical
establishment. She was
frequently asked to give papers in family planning conferences
in
Thailand and other countries about her superb program of
training others
to perform this operation.
It is true that sometimes there was some scarring
following the
operation - which can happen in this country as well. Also, it
is true
that the diets of the tribal women in Southeast Asia are often
very poor,
and that there are various other things that can cause serious
diseases
among them, but usually these matters are not related to the
sterilization.
4. "In addition witnesses now verify the rumor that blood was
simultaneously stolen from these women for resale."
This is total fabrication! When women were first
coming from
Burma we thought it might be good to test for malaria,
and enough blood
was taken to cover a slide! When we found that over
70% exhibited malaria
in their blood we did not bother to do that any
more. As I mentioned
above we simply gave every woman a full course of
malaria medicine.
While we were in Thailand there were wild
rumors about people
going around to steal blood to sell etc. There was
never proof of this,
but lots of fear. We never took blood to sell - or
even thought of doing
so. We did give blood transfusions to a few women who
were very weak. I
remember a Lahu woman from Burma who had almost bled
to death during her
last miscarriage. She was given blood before and after
the sterilization,
as were a few others. We also provided powdered milk
for those still
nursing babies and needing extra nourishment. Believe
me, we did
everything we possibly could to help those families
get the very best
service possible. Twenty years later for a group that
calls itself "Akha
Heritage Foundation" to put a totally blatant lie like
this on the
internet is staggering to say the least!
5. ". to this day in this region of Burma medical care
is very difficult
to come by for the poor."
Right! And that is why we paid their travel
and even for their
food for the journey. That is also why we
knocked ourselves out to help
them past this hurdle in their lives, because
there was no way a couple
could continue to feed and care for their
children when they were having
ten children or so before the woman was 35
years of age - and we had many
such cases!
6. "Of the more than 20,000 who witnesses say
were sterilized in Burma
alone, they say that more than 3,000 women
died."
To make the statement that over 3,000
women died from the
outpatient operation when there were
fewer than 350 Akha women from Burma
who received that operation stretches
the imagination! In 1996 when I was
attending a conference related to the
Hani and Akha in Chiang Mai,
Thailand, I was confronted by a
Westerner charging that the women in
Burma who were sterilized were in
terrible pain from the operation, with
many of them dying. I checked around
with some Akha leaders from Burma
and Thailand asking if this was
true. They were amazed to hear this
(including one Akha in-law of the
Westerner who made the accusation),
and
told me it was not true. The wife of
one of the men told how as a little
girl she had been with her mother when
she went to the Phayao hospital to
receive this operation, and how
grateful her mother and father were to
me
for helping out in this way. Then they
asked me where I had heard about
women being in serious pain. When I
told them who said it they laughed
and said, "It sounds like something he
would say!"
7. ". Paul Lewis claimed that any pain
related to the surgery was simply
psychosomatic."
Tribal women in Southeast Asia have
lots of pains and problems. I
remember a Lahu woman who had had
sterilization coming to our home while
we still lived in Chiang Mai and
saying that because of the surgery she
had a terrible rash on her legs. We
looked. Sure enough, she had a bad
rash. We said that it was not due to
the surgery. "But I never had it
before the operation, so that must be
the reason" she said. We took her
to a hospital and got medicine for
her, and the rash cleared up.
If I made a statement to the effect
that "any pain was simply
psychosomatic" I'm afraid I did not
state my own convictions very well.
Many such pains can be psychosomatic,
but many of them are the result of
intestinal worms, cancer, poor diet,
working much harder than they
should, adhesions from various causes,
etc. etc. As far as we could tell,
within five years after the end of the
program, there was not one
fatality that could be considered a
result of the operation. This may be
a better record than in some Western
countries.
8. The author calls me a "very
powerful man", and claims I was giving
"money under the table from his
Baptist-related organizations".
Money sent to the field for work went
through the Lahu and Akha
themselves. I did not receive
it. Actually, none of the money for
the
family planning program came from
Baptist sources, and funds for
education and development often come
from Sweden, Germany and other
countries. I must acknowledge the
generous funding of the group called
Family Planning International
Assistance for supporting the Hill
Tribes
Family Planning Program of McCormick
Hospital.
For over 40 years I gave my
life and talent to help these people
in every way possible, but I always
worked WITH them, and sought to turn
over all aspects of the work to them
as quickly as possible. In regard to
the family planning program, I turned
all of that over to the Thai
Government at the end of our seven and
a half years of service.
9. The author speaks of the pastors in
Christian Akha villages upsetting
the traditional cultural
system. (Actually, I do not know where
the part
about the "five men" comes from.)
If and when an Akha pastor does that, I am not happy. I firmly
believe in the division of church and state, and in allowing the Akha to
determine the type of culture in which they wish to live. Often, of
course, the pastor is the only person in the village who has had at least
a basic education and can speak Burmese or Thai, so when officials and
others come to the village they may talk with him more than the headman -
which is unfortunate. Anyone who knows what I did in both Burma and
Thailand will know that I pushed for an education for ALL tribal people,
young and old, male and female. I can honestly say that I have not
personally been in any Christian Akha village in either Burma or Thailand
where the headman has been superceded by the pastor. I know there are
some mission groups that tend to bring this type of thing about, but it
certainly is not the Baptist way. I am afraid that the author of these
statements does not really understand either me, or the Akha people.
10. "Paul Lewis, now safely in retirement in Claremont, California, could
not be reached to comment."
There are a number of Akha people living in and near Mae Sai who
could have given the author my address, telephone number and e-mail
address. It would have been the ethical thing to do for the author to
have at least contacted me before spreading these accusations around the
world on the web. Perhaps I could have saved him some embarrassment, if
nothing else.
CREDENTIALS OF PAUL W. LEWIS
I was born in Denver, Colorado June 30, 1924. In 1946, while
attending seminary in Philadelphia, I learned that a "great
tribe in the
hills of Eastern Burma did not have their language reduced
to writing",
and I felt that was not fair. It was the Akha people, I
later learned.
After intensive linguistic training my wife and I went to
Burma in the
fall of 1947 and were there until April 1966. There we
served the Lahu
and Akha people under the auspices of the Board of
International
Ministries, American Baptist Churches/USA (with headquarters
in Valley
Forge, PA).
After studying Lahu first and then Akha, I reduced the Akha
language to
writing in 1950, and began to produce literature. Dr. Frank
Laubach, the
world-renowned literacy expert, came through Rangoon at that
time, so my
wife and I took an Akha young man and two Lahu men with us
to work with
Dr. Laubach in producing Akha and Lahu primers especially
designed for
adults. Using a pattern Dr. Laubach taught us we also
produced readers
for new literates for both tribes.
I was asked by the Human Relations Area File in New
Haven to
write up my findings concerning the Akha people of Burma, so
before we
left Burma in 1966 I spent 15 months doing intensive
research into their
fascinating culture. I produced four volumes entitled
"Ethnographic Notes
on the Akha of Burma". These were published by HRAF. It will
be noted
that I sought to include the Akha words for all of their
ceremonies and
other cultural activities. I wished to help others know and
understand
these great people.
We went to serve the Lahu in Thailand in 1968. During our early
years there I taught anthropology one year at the University of Chiang
Mai (I had an MA in anthropology at that time from the University of
Colorado). I also began collecting ethnographic notes on all six tribes
in Thailand, which eventually was useful in writing the book my wife
Elaine and I authored called, "Peoples of the Golden Triangle". It was
published in English, German, French and Thai, and the latter translation
is currently being used in teaching anthropology in Universities in
Thailand.
I received a Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology at the University of
Oregon in 1978. Much of my reason for studying in that field was that
I
wanted to do NOTHING to harm the wonderful people I had
totally fallen in
love with - the Lahu and Akha people of Southeast Asia! My
dissertation
is entitled: "Introducing Family Planning to the Akha People
of
Thailand", and is available on micro-film. I sent my own
copy of this
dissertation to an Akha Cultural Center in Chiang Mai, which
is just now
being developed by some Akha leaders in Burma and Thailand.
I have produced two Akha dictionaries, the first
published by
Cornell University, the second (greatly enlarged, and with
many Thai
terms included) was published in Thailand by the Development
and
Agricultural Project for Akha (DAPA), a development
organization which I
helped to start, and which was made possible by financial
help from
Diakonia of Sweden.
Besides various books and magazines I helped to produce in
Burma, as well
as the Akha New Testament and an Akha hymnal, I produced the
following
Akha books in Thailand toward the end of my stay there: Akha
Ballads,
Poems and Songs (313 pages); Akha Riddles and Proverbs (113
pages); Akha
Stories (330 pages); Akha Health Book (131 pages).
I must acknowledge the wonderful backing I have had from
various
groups - first and foremost being the International
Ministries of
American Baptists. They made it possible for my wife and me
to share
God's infinite love with the people in Southeast Asia, which
was always
our basic goal. I was far from being a "perfect" missionary,
but I
appreciate so much the compassionate and creative backing
the American
Baptists gave to us and our work. Then I must also thank the
Lahu and
Akha people of both Burma and Thailand who have taught me so
many
wonderful things.
My address is:
Dr. Paul W. Lewis
560 W. 8th St.
Claremont, CA 91711
U.S.A.
My phone number is: (909)
625-3350.
My e-mail address uses my
initials (pwlewis) with
@juno.com.
There is also a fax number
for the Pilgrim Place
community, where I live.
That number is:
(909) 399-5508 (my
name must be
included in
the
beginning of the
fax, since many
people use this
number).
Paul W. Lewis
March 18, 1999
Forwarded to ELL by David Bradley
David Bradley
Chair, Linguistics
La Trobe University
Bundoora VIC 3083
Australia
tel +61 3 9479 2362
fax +61 3 9479 1520
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