ELL: Indigenous Children Alert, Akha, Thailand

[Matthew McDaniel]

Tribal Alert!!!
Please Forward!!!

                     Maesai Chinese Baptist Church
                     Builds 300 Bed Boarding School
In The Lowlands For Taking Hilltribe Children From Their Tribal Mountain
                                 Homes.

Maesai, Chiangrai, Thailand
June 6, 2001

A huge complex is rising from the rice fields near the highway some ten
kilometers south of Maesai Thailand.

Site workers say it is a 300 bed boarding school for hilltribe children
from the mountains to indoctrinate and educate them away from their
traditions into Chinse Fundamentalism.

Cost of the project is set at more than 20 million baht, or
approximately $445,000 US dollars plus, not counting operational costs.

Site workers said the funds were donated by US Churches.

For this cost more than 40 of Thailand's 282 Akha villages could be made
economically self sufficient in their mountain homes.  So why is not the
mission doing that?

The children will be coaxed with incentives to leave their traditional
lives, villages and families and leave the mountains.

Thai Government policy is in favor of removing all hilltribe from their
traditional mountain homes which is very valuable land for growing
commercial tree crops, fruit, flowers for export.  Naturally the
hilltribe are not being included in the investment plan except for wage
laborers.

Currently there are thousands of hilltribe children who have been
removed from their mountain homes throughout Chiangrai and Chiangmai
provinces.

This Chinese mission plays once again, as repeated so often in the past
by these same people, into government hands.

The Maesai Chinese Baptist Mission has been running an aggressive
village splitting operation for at least three years now, pushing new
church buildings into traditional Akha villages even if there was only
one family who they could buy up.

They have taken over a score of villages with these tactics, the
blocking of the construction of a traditional Akha school in Hua Mai Kom
and the splitting of Mae Chan Luang Akha with a host of others.

Please write or call your Thai embassy, and protest this violation of
hilltribe integrity on the part of the Maesai Chinese Baptist Mission.

Or you may write a letter of protest to the mission and demand that they
leave these children in the mountains.


Maesai Chinese Baptist Church
Moo 7
Maesai, Chiangrai, 57130
Thailand


Matthew McDaniel
Maesai, Chiangrai, Thailand


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