EXTREMELY URGENT AKHA ALERT
PLEASE FORWARD TO ALL YOU KNOW WHO MIGHT HELP

THE MISSION CAMPAIGN TO OVER RUN THE AKHA PEOPLE IN THAILAND IS ACCELERATING!!!!!!!

PLEASE HELP TURN BACK THIS OFFENSIVE!!!!

Dear Friends:

I am writing to inform you that more and more Akha villages are being over run by American and other foreign missionaries, churches being built everywhere and as we come to know this is not with unanimous consent from the villagers but is being pushed on them with the consent of a few.

The matter is complex, hard to explain all in an email but you should get the drift in the context of history well known to most. Also you can read much on our web site.

The missions are taking village after village, splitting it, all the goal to build a church in the village and eliminate the traditional Akha culture and life style.

To many people tribal people are backward and the faster their "backward traditions" are destroyed the better.

Ask yourself if this is how you think, and if it is, then please let me know to take you off this mailing list.

Otherwise we need your help.

We need a couple things.

First and foremost we need that journalists and people with contacts internationally can help us get international investigation into this matter. We need people with power. Not vague power.

The international community must expose and put pressure on these missions, and also the Thai government to stop this process of church building in all the villages. This is not free conversion, and it is well known here that this is a take over.

It is politically motivated to control all these people through the church. Till now the Akha run their own villages unmollested and uncontrolled by outsiders. They have trouble medically, with forestry and army, but internally nothing else as compared to missions.

Many people play surprised at this. Is not control after all the real goal of the church? We think so despite their claims to loftier things. If church people knew what was really being done to these people, the political and religious political exploitation, it would soon stop as they would cease to give money for this.

It would appear that the Taiwanese and American backed missionaries intend to over run all the villages in a 135 village region in the balance of this year.

There are 282 villages in Thailand all told, in the other areas many villages have already been pushed to convert. Maybe there are at most 150 unconverted villages left, or less than half even.

I also need better tools on this end.

We have an anti-missionary T-shirt campaign that the Akha are keen on. These shirts cost $2 each, we give them to the Akha, they are more or less a low cash society and can not afford to buy them and for the campaign to still work. We are trying to mobilize and unify the remaining Akha.

We need many more T-shirts. If we had 5000 we could probably at least hold part of the line.

We also need to pay off a printing press of $1100 to assist in printing to distribute to the Akha.

If you can help us do this, we have a chance. Otherwise all the villages will be over run. Then what will we say?

Do you think we will work with the Akha to record their traditions, their music and knowledge in villages all controlled by the church where it is forbidden. Do you realize what is being lost? An entire way of life? A nation, a civilization, emcompassed into nature, destroyed like all the American Indian ones?

Akha.org explains fully the mission situation and has many photos. You can go and take a look there to see the size of the problem. Go to the pages below, especially the second one.

http://www.akha.org
http://www.akha.org/churches.htm

The missions are well funded, the Akha are not. That is why the missions can do this.

We think the Akha should have the right to be who they are, Akha. International law calls for this but is not enforced.

If you want to be directly involved in helping fight this matter to the end in a clear way, please contact me. Sympathy on the other hand, alone, will get nothing done.

We very much need your help and thank you for it. This is no longer a battle for one or two villages, this is a battle for all that are left, the lines are drawn.

I received the below email yesterday, June 12, 2000. Please read it carefully, this is how the missionaries are thinking.

Matthew McDaniel
Maesai, Chiangrai, Thailand

*******

AN EMAIL TO US FROM MISSIONARIES ABOUT OUR CAMPAIGN TO PROTECT THE AKHA RIGHT TO THEIR OWN CULTURE:

[begin mission email]
YOU ARE A MISSIONARY -- but your mission will fail where others will not.

The time for honoring yourself will soon come to an end.

The bumper stickers you solicit are degrading and you will face your own shame for this.

Your bitterness will only reap evil.

Turn now and undo what you have begun.

You hypocrite, don't you know you make judgements on some who are not who you say they are? You are intolerant yourself!

Your mission is ill-advised and dangerous to yourself?? you will reap what you sow--anger and intolerance.

*****

We will use your information and research on your page here to begin an offensive against your cause, using this information against you, and we will previal.

You cannot stop it. . .ever. We will win and your efforts are in vain. Missionaries will come, again and again and again, and you will start over. Right now more missionaries are being trained to come into the land and share the joy and love the people deserve.

More will come. And more. And your mission will fail misersably.

And the missionaries will still come, ready to serve and help as always, and your pitiful resistance will dwindle.

Your life will be wasted; lost in the wind.

Dont bother replying, this address is probably already out of service by the time you get this.

[end mission email]