From akha@loxinfo.co.th Thu Jan 6 06:12:38 2000 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id GAA14022 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 06:12:37 -0800 Received: from chmai.loxinfo.co.th (root@chmai.loxinfo.co.th [203.146.0.65]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id GAA25695; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 06:12:33 -0800 Received: from loxinfo.co.th (p13-criHS1.N.loxinfo.net.th [203.146.34.13]) by chmai.loxinfo.co.th (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id UAA31509; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 20:29:50 +0700 Message-ID: <387499ED.2F48BAF6@loxinfo.co.th> Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2000 20:34:48 +0700 From: Matthew McDaniel Reply-To: akha@chmai.loxinfo.co.th X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 (Macintosh; I; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: akha@loxinfo.co.th Subject: Extremely URGENT: FORCED MOVE OF AKHA VILLAGE Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit THIS IS AN EXTREMELY URGENT CALL FOR HELP. WE NEED JOURNALISTS HERE AT THE VILLAGE PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO ALL YOU KNOW. Chiangrai, Northern Thailand ******* Forced Move of An Akha Village of 78 Years! This is an urgent message and update about the forced move of an Akha village. This move is to occur January, end January, this year, NOW in a few weeks. Myself and one other visited the Akha village Huuh Mah Akha (thai pronunciation Huai Maak) in Ampour Mae Faluang District of Chiangrai Province. The Thai personell at the village at the time said that the village was being forced to move because they were cutting down trees and poluting the water shed. The move was being ordered by the Thai Forestry Department and an office dealing with Watershed. As I have monitered this area often, I can see no proof of cutting of trees that could not be controlled, especially since non native pine is planted up all the way to the village on most sides of the valley, the valley, small valley walls being used for food and highly developed terraces, the terraces supplying most of the rice, making slash and burn not desired or much necessary. This village happens to have one of the most environmentaly friendly situations in the area, as they have put great effort into these terraces and to use a minimum of the land. Certainly forestry and water issues could be addressed without taking all that these people have invested in and owned all their life? What is very badly needed now is that anyone who can alert a journalist to this situation should contact me, so that some arrangement could be made to come here and look at the situation. We contacted the Ampour office for Mae Faluang district in Chiangrai Province and were told that the order came from Bangkok basically and that it was being backed up by the Thai army. True to their word we found Thai army in the village today, with a truck and putting on a party before "the chicken's head is cut". The Thai civilians in the village said that no body was being forced to move that all the Akha present wanted to move to the tiny houses being built by generous Taiwanese people down the mountain on a steep hillside of a "new village" that will have little to no land for them to farm or place their animals and all investment will be lost. The Akha all present immediately sung out that this was not true at all and that none of them, not one, wanted to leave. Can you imagine being 55, having lived somewhere all your life, and your mom, and being told, hey, sorry, you are a non person, want identity cards in Thailand, well then you have to move. This is a move into poverty. Probability that these families will see their daughters go into prostitution is high. Having little resource once the land is gone. The boys as well may very likely enter into the drug trade to make up the difference. The cost in social welfare to the Akha and the Thai government will also be high. In addition if trees and watershed are going to be the set method of determining if a village gets moved then the real goal must be that all the Akha villages get moved out of the mountains into the flat lands, into ghettos if you will, landless, labor class for the Thais, as is the case in many places already. Many have asked what they can do. Well, we are really in need of some reporters to come here and look at this, and any other people that can be observers. I know that few can come, that it is not easily possible to drop all and go, but at the same time it is not going to be easy to stop the move without there actually being people here to look at the situation, report back to their own countries governments, and make a presence to the village. The Akha involved, except for the land, have not much of anything, they are poor, are lucky to have temporary id cards issued the hill tribe and have no legal rights or recourse. All the Thais I spoke to said "sorry, it must happen" not to them of course. It is also recommended that you contact the nearest Thai embassy and equire politely what is going on. Do not be confrontive, but persistent and polite. The name of the village is Huai Maak. It is a few kilometers on your map from a town called Haen Taek north of Doi Maesalong in Chiangrai Province, north Thailand. It is not the issue strictly of legality, but of humanity. If this is the cost of trees and water, we need it not. Huai Maak village latitude and longitude coordinates are: 20degrees 13.31 N 099degrees 34.49 E 1053 meters 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@loxinfo.co.th Discussion Groups: akha@onelist.com indigenousworld@onelist.com .