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Date Posted: 2004-04-30 12:48:45
Author: Zoe
FORCED EVICTION OF AKHA VILLAGE
[Bangkok Post: 16.1.00; The Nation: 1.2.00; Akha Heritage Foundation: Jan. 2000] - INDIGENOUS peoples and human rights groups have circulated an action alert via the Internet to prevent the forced eviction of an Akha village in Northern Thailand and called on the international community to take action. "Please contact your closest Thai Embassy and ask that the eviction of this village be reconsidered. Don't be confrontative, be polite," says the statement.
Huay Mak (or Huuh Mah Akha), located Mae Faluang District in Chiang Rai Province, at about 1000 feet, is one of the oldest Akha villages in Thailand. The 78-year old village is remarkable in that it has been an independently developed sustainable agricultural system of self-sufficiency. A few weeks ago, however, reports surfaced that the Thai military wanted to relocate all 180-plus residents under a security and reafforestation project.
Lt-Col Suwit Wangyao, head of the project in the Mae Faluang-Mae Chan area, said the new site had been prepared for the ethnic villagers in Mae Yuek Village, which is located some seven kilometers away from Huay Mak. He acknowledged that house construction was financially supported by the Taiwanese government. However, he refused to elaborate why and to what extent the Taiwanese were involved. He also denied that the project involved the forced eviction of the Akha. "We never remove the villagers against their will. The ethnic villagers have chosen to join our relocation programme because they know they will have a better livelihood," he claimed.
However, Julia McDonald from Australia said in a letter to The Nation that she witnessed all male members of the village sign by thumbprint a historic document stating they were against being forcibly relocated, and that such a move would lead to the annihilation of their culture. After visiting the "new village", she said: "It comprises 31 concrete boxes with iron barred windows on a sharply excavated potential landslide, intersected by a new road, electricity poles, and framed by a monumental Chinese style concrete gateway. Without exaggeration, this new site resembles nothing short of (a) concentration camp and is a huge misappropriation of funds."
Originally, military officials told the Akha villagers they had to move because they polluted local water sources and cut down trees in a watershed area. But critics say, the allegations that the Akha are endangering the local water supply are untrue, as the water from the valley, where the village is situated, drains into the Haen Taek area only a kilometres away, where pollutants are dumped into the water by a multitude of others sources. They also question the accusation of deforestation, arguing the Akha are actually improving the environment: The area land farmed by the villagers features sustainably managed rice-terraces, lychee, papaya, tea and coffee plantations, in addition to vegetable fields.
A representative of the Akha Heritage Foundation, Mathew McDaniel, said the Akha were determined to resist the military's relocation project. Moreover, he linked the resettlement scheme with a huge reafforestation project in the area, conducted by the state-owned Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT). A PTT source, however, promptly denied the allegation, saying the agency had nothing to do with the relocation.
AKHA PLAGUED BY TOURISM
Excerpted from a report by Mathew McDaniel of the Chiang Rai-based Akha Heritage Foundation (Jan. 2000)
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 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 Chiang Rai 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. Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai are full of trekking and tour companies to the hilltribe. When will they cease to be objects, start to be people?
Big roads shoved through their villages 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 Mae Salong, 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 promiscuous, 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.
Where ever you are, contact who you may, and plead intervention on the behalf of these people. 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.
(For further information, contact: Matthew McDaniel, The Akha Heritage Foundation, 386/3 Sailom Joi Rd, Maesai, Chiang Rai 57130, Thailand)
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