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Akha Chronicles Missionaries Missions were a very destructive influence on the lives of
the Akha and were bent on destroying the small remaining hopes which they
had, their last identity. The missions were so arrogant they could not see the WHITE
nature of their work, and this made disuading them by normal means
impossible. KMT British and
opium wars the
missionaries KMT Tactics of Village Splitting and
Take Over Black Friday In An I and a friend fought our way up mud track roads after a
four hour trip to reach one of We had a
gift of writing books and pencils for the last traditional families in the
village. Two weeks
before the headman told me that the Chinese Baptists had come and convinced three quarters
of the village to become Christian.
From personally checking with the families
they had told me that it was required that they abandon all of their
traditions in the process.
Finished. So when I climbed the ladder to the headman’s porch
and sat down I was greatly concerned as he
sadly poured me tea. I and my friend
drank while he related the events of the last two weeks. There had been five or six families that stuck with
him. There was one village elder
living up the hill
that was helping to hold it all together.
The headman had not invited the missionaries and did
not approve of their demands. But then
some time in the last week they had convinced
the elder to join their forces below and abandon the headman. So he moved down to those
huts. The other families soon followed along.
What could he do, with the last elder gone from
the tradition there was no one left to teach the old ways to the
families. He was more than
just a little sad, saddest that I had ever seen him. Though the huts had not moved he was now a
headman without a village and the new puppet pastor the new functional headman. He knew that the missionaries always
promised to give lots to the people if they converted. Meanwhile the villagers were still asking
for medicine that the missionaries apparently weren’t including in the
deal. I went down into the other huts and was immediately struck
by all the changes being imposed on
the people. Numerous women were no
longer wearing their headresses as they had been
so proudly doing all the years that I had supplied medicine to this
village. I asked them why
and they said they couldn’t any more.
Some of the older women still hung on. But the
pressure was now definitely there to abandon them. There would be no traditional practices,
songs, or dances at all now, possibly something would be allowed at
Christmas. The woman
who practices the traditional knowledge and medicine for the village was stopped. She was told that it was evil and that she
could no longer treat people’s illnesses. In the name
of their religious beliefs, and quite in contradition with the spirit of
those beliefs, the
missionaries are eradicating Akha culture in village after village. The Akha, with probably 98%
written illiteracy, their books the elders, have no way or perspective by
which to judge
this method that comes with all the promises of prosperity. Prosperity that seldom materializes. From a standpoint of
incredible rapid economic change and severe poverty they are
being robbed of their rich heritage.
Children are taught that their parents are living under the
power of darkness and bondage, teaching disrespect to parents in direct
contradiction of the missionaries’ own religious texts. Such practices could not be gotten away with without much
criticism in the west, but people who enjoy
the freedoms of their individual traditions and beliefs in the west do not
believe in offering
those same freedoms to others if they can exploit them for the agendas of their
mission agencies. We believe
this has everything to do with endangered language. If you ban the culture, what exactly is
the language then good for? A
religious ban imposed on culture is just as powerful as a governmental ban on
culture if not more so. We find these repeated actions to eradicate Akha culture
from among the Akha people as going against standards set forth in the UN
Draft of Human Rights for Indigenous Peoples. Anyone who
would like an entire copy of the UN Draft on Indigenous Rights please send me
an email. There is a
whole lot going wrong here. Why I am opposed to the
Missionaries: A betrayal of what is good A betrayal of a people Creating divisions Refusing to accept the culture of
the Akha Arrogance, hypochrisy The Akha Akha Days Part One The Missionary Cold War A complex
and careful war. How missions work and effect the
lives and independence of the Akha and their freedom to their own religion
and culture. How the villages are broken and converted. The involvement and structure of the mission system in
north Thailand is very important to understand, but of greatest importance is
to understand that the Akha as a people have a right to their own tradition
and culture under international law, and this right is certainly not being
protected. It is one thing to say that
the Church has a question of character and morality in this matter, but
ultimately the failure to protect the Akha and their culture must fall in
part both on the Thai government and International organizations and the
Missions. The missions, since they are
the perpetrators, are the chief defendant in the matter. The history of missions is long, through the centuries,
from crusades to the new world, a political order that always claimed it
wasn’t. Always converting and
eliminating tribal cultures and often tribal peoples, subjegating smaller
groups into the larger ones, assisting colonialization and assimilization. A
growth industry on the back of others, following close to the exploitation of
resources and lands that the indigenous live on. This parallel situation is very hard for
missionaries to admit to. They are
woefully ignorant of anything but the polished, carefully selected version of
their conquest history. It is quite
amazing that anyone denies this political role and goal of missions does not
exist, but quite a few still do make this denial. In They are here for a reason.
I am not sure what all those reasons are, but it certainly appears to
be based on inherant needs of the individuals in these organizations and not
much on the needs of the people whom they work with, in this case the Akha. The need of the missionary individual is to stay out of
hell, and they feel that in order to ensure this, they must also keep a few
other people out of hell by converting them to the same fear paradym. This is
the driving force of the missionaries, you won’t meet one that wants to
talk the Bible or the details and justifications of all this. At best, rather than logic and blow by blow
discussion you will encounter rhetoric and quotations. Obviously these people are very insecure,
very unsure of themselves, and really are quite
afraid to think for themselves. Many
of them have their lives, years and years, buried in such ventures and if it
were inspected now, the validity, well, might be more than they could handle,
that they had wasted much time and years.
Or had just been wrong. I don’t mind that people believe different than I do
but I wonder why they can’t even argue their own belief system? For
instance, say if I said I agreed that it is good to keep people out of
hell. I might add that I believe that
for the sake of argument because I also believe that it is good to try and
prevent bad things from happening to people, much in the same way the Thai
highway department is installing guard rails in the mountains along the side
of steep roads. So then I would ask
the missions, that if saving people from harm is the point, then why is not
the money focused to do the most good, water, medical care, human rights, etc
rather than build big church buildings? But they are not so interested in such things. Many Christians make careful distinctions
before giving away money. One is that
they are around to save souls only, the costly church buildings are for this
reason, and they aren’t allowed to spend for saving from other things. Ok, saved from snake bites but not
malaria. Odd support system they do
have indeed. This explains their casual disregard of the living and
human rights conditions of the Akha.
It is just much easier to build a church and claim success. When you need more to do, and when you need
to show how compassionate missionaries are in helping others where the
Buddhists won’t then you can cross the line and borrow one or two human
needs also, to show how much you care for these poor folk. But, the real goal is evangelization, and
the rest is borrowed for additional kudos. For this same reason, having supplied a village with a
church, the missionaries feel no guilt at going home and living and eating
well in Chiangrai, Chiangmai or elsewhere, because they have done their
job. This is a very careful good news, or “gospel” as they are so fond of
calling it. This is the purpose of
their work, to spread the “good news” the gospel. However, the good part of the news is very
limited. When this is pointed out, the
missions must refer to their mission packet for working with the Akha. In this mission packet, built, embelished
upon, and added to as the years go buy, are the standard protective answers
that they have for being basically racist bigots that they are. “Oh, the Akha are bound in the spirit
of bondage, that is why they must suffer and die till they come out of it and
think like us.” And so goes the
thinking and the neighborhood. The missionaries can not cope with the fact of how good
they all live, compared to the Akha they claim to help. In only one or two situations are
missionaries living in the villages and this is for the sole purpose of
putting a complete end to the culture and converting them all to be good
american style mindless evangelicals. Goals of the missions and why we have a problem The chief
effect of the missions is to deny the Akha their right to be who they are,
keep their own culture and traditions.
The missionaries wish to impose a different one, one of the west, on these people.
This is made easier by the poverty, another reason that the missions
do not fight the poverty in the villages.
To fight the poverty would make them less able to succeed in forcing
their religion on the Akha. The missionaries lie and go to great length to deny that
this is what they are doing, taking away the Akha right to freedom to their
own religion and culture. These people
are criminal by every measure of international law guaranteeing the Akha the
right to be who they are, religiously and culturally. Further the missionaries seldom speak the
language and have little clue to the culture of the Akha. It isn’t like their
own so it is wrong. That is
all. I would like to point out the fact that the missions are
not here in any limited kind of way.
They are not here to convert a maximum of ten villages. They feel compelled due to their belief
system, no matter how filled with contradictions it is, that they must
convert the entire earth to their way of thinking. They must have proof that they are succeeding
and this need for proof brings many errors and ills with it also. But it must be constantly pointed out, that this is their
belief system that they number one not only feel they must do and impose,
they also in a self fulfilling way, feel that it must be their right to
convert all to believe like them, or they are not having religious
freedom. They say nothing about the
right of the other people whom they wish to convert to be left alone, to
practice their own culture. Further, there is no unified theory of what their own
religion is, so every individual and group comes with a diferent definition,
within the greater pool. The greater
effort accepts this based on the idea that at least everyone will be
converted to some form of social Christianity. I say social Christianity because if you ask these people
what it means to be a Christian, they will say that in reality many people
are not “true Christians”, are only church goers. But they try to at least convert villagers to
this first status, in order to increase the second, but would deny they are
related. So we convert an Akha village
to be Christian, but are they all Christians, don’t know, ok. So one of my cases against these people is that they are
converting the villages to an acceptable form of evangelical american style
religious culture first of all and that this does not have anything to do
with what their own Bible even claims to be about, mass social movements not
really being the focus of the Bible. So how does this spell out for the Akha? Since there are no limits to what the missions want, we can
assume that their goals at conversion want it all. For the Akha, this means they want all Akha
villages converted, their culture put an end
to. It really doesn’t matter if
there is later on inner strife with two and three churches sprouting up. They have been converted first off and the
details can be sorted out later. That
the Akha were not allowed to be who they wished to be is not of a matter. So the goal is to convert all the Akha, to take over by
force of outside pressure, all Akha villages in None of the missions involved will discuss the specific
problems involved in this, though they do admit problems exist. In many cases, due to many efforts on my
part to expose this missionary campaign, they are going to length to mask
their true efforts by pretending to care for the culture of the Akha. They are liars. Over the past 80 years the missions have destroyed much of
Akha culture, displaced the youth, abandoned the youth would be better to
say, converting them out of being Akha into being nothing with no place at all unless it is
the church, which hardly matches the knowlegde and past they came from. If you go to Akha.org you will see many photos and
additional commentary on this process that they have brought about in the
mountains. Current situation But I would now like to go on to mention the current
situation with the Akha and what the missions are doing to them. Currently the mission, numbering in the
scores, are working to break the last of the traditional Akha villages
and strenthen their grip on the existing villages. This is a political colonization. Surely the Most of the missions are from the We have numerous villages now that are being split or under
pressure to split. The missions
involved are known, who they are, how they are working, who they are paying
to do the dirty work. Requests to the UN for assistance in the matter go
unheeded. The traditional elders are pushed aside and given no
choice. Though it is illegal for people who don’t follow the Akha way
to live in the village, these new converts that have been converted in the
villags, insist on staying and building a church and defying the leadership
of the village. In the past they used
to seperate to another village, fine enough, they no longer do, insisting
that it is easier just to break the whole village. Christians say that they are suppose to
obey those in authority. Missionaries
deny this. They have a way of breaking every rule that they themselves say
they believe in. Once pushed aside, not only are the elders reduced, when there
are enough converts in the village who have taken control, then they will be
pushed to claim the village as a Christian village, against the wishes of the
elders, and then they forbid all Akha religion in the village, taking the
village over and then forbidding the village the same religious freedom they
insisted upon. This is a war, a cold war of religious and political
terrorism being waged against the Akha in the mountains. No bullets, just lots of force. Many people comment that the Akha must agree to this or it
wouldn’t happen. This is not at
all the case. Well paid Akha are sent
to force a conversion, step by step on the new village. The intruder does not work, does not farm
and is not from that village. They are
paid insurgents, paid trouble makers.
They find the weakest point in the village, some family with a problem
with the existing leadership, and then the power battle is on. Divide and conquer. The trouble making churches and missions are photographed
and listed on the web site Akha.org. (This being the biggest ploy of the protestant dominated
US). So the excesses of the Catholic
structure could be made to look like they had been done away with, while
still retaining in full the nasty habits of the lesser character of humanity
when combined with the power excesses of religion. Where as the Catholic church was centralized and powerful,
the protestant church is decentralized and less powerful. If it was a
reformation movement, it was only briefly so.
The final result of the movement was many little units of the church
which have basically no oversight or accountability, and definitely will not
answer questions, the most notable part of any religious authority or
government. The failure to answer questions
they don’t like which would expose corruption, human rights abuses and
the very lack of freedom of religion, as in freedom from their religion.) Missionaries Always
unable to answer the questions Korean Presbyterian Rose Martinez Runs the Children's
Happy Home and a few other places Missions I would have to have a strategy of what I was going to do
there. I hate to unite with the
religious element because I think that despite the fact that they have some
of the better things in consideration, that in reality they are not so
willing to be intellectually honest about all that is going on. They are taking some of the old fashioned
techniques, already abandoned in much of the west for the negative side
effects they brought with them. Try explaining
this. Forget it. No one questions God. They are building the I think of how much I could have gotten done here if I had
had some brotherhood, some cooperation from the religious organizations down
in Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai area. But
they all seem to be part of a club and I would have to send out all the signs
of buying into all the dogma that they are a part of if I was going to get
money from them and from my experiences with the likes of Christian Happy
Home and Rose Martinez that would still not be too much of a likely hood
because they are all trying to enlarge their Dynasties and aren’t
interested in helping someone up here with new and different ideas get
anything done in an area that they quite apparently would like to annex but
just haven’t had the time or energy to do so to this point. That is all sad when one thinks of the loss. For four years I have asked for their help
and got none. Meanwhile the kids could
have seen a different life. Next door
the Oh well, the personal questions, choices and decisions go
on. Barry Tell more about this one. He comes here with his silent wife. Preaches hard, then
digs the young chicks and ditches the old broom and takes home a real babe. Missioanary family Gaw Jaw Loi Chiang lewis/cia People say this is why Lewis
got kicked out of Bill young His father was Gordon Young,
the one who had the infamous comments about the Akha. He worked for the army, cia,
who knows. Nimit says he visited him
at his hut in a others
said he had more than one lahu wife,
is he married? you mean how many? Gordon youngs comments about akha
from Mika Toyota That they
were the dirtiest people and one guy screwed all the virgins brian barney/dea Brian Barney
got calls from the DEA They played
basketball together on Sundays Meese brothers Their father The meese brothers, some say
they are pentacostal, others say they believe in removing spirits, lewis said
they taught his villages that if they weren’t baptised with the holy
spirit they weren’t saved yet.
He didn’t like them. The father, he was said to be
well liked by the different tribes and met them at Chads guest house in
Maesai sometimes when he came there. The Paul Lewis Sterilizations The full
story and Akha Reply Missioinaries Came here
and worked a lot with the Akha, I don’t think they understand them and
that may be academic in the long run. protestant many
protestant groups, like rats eating at a carcass catholic low ebb but
steady, always a balance to the protestant Past, present, Yote and adjay dapa
people, don’t know what village they are from, would be good to know
and how long ago lewis began working with them. Nimit would know. Phillip said nimit was jealous that yos got
the job instead of him, something like that. Course there is an odd
connection on nimit. People said lewis
stayed with nimit for a long time to try and get him to dry out, but failed
and nimit says lewis told nimits wife that it was useless and to take a hike
and she did and that she became a prostitute in Pensa’s Mission Does the
government like pensa’s mission?
He may be tolerated because they still help agenda of
assimilation. Is it a form of
accountablility? Akha women who pensa knew who couldn’t bear children.
Why? What is the goal of missionaries? To get
complete control of the Akha for themselves, their way of thinking and their
religfious organizations. Compares to
the ethiopians at Hertzof Yasef and the “TOM” training school. Adjay married an American with baby
now Adjay has a
save the girls center. Missionaries,
just answer the question, what about akha culture. still
paying for sterilizations. Abaw Leeh
Gaw at Loh Mah Cheh, house burned by Christians. Gaw Jaw Akha
forestery Dispute? Christians cut sacred trees. Missions List: animism
replaced with seven devils akha
hostels, dapa etc betrayal of
a people bridging to
jesus christ control the
driving missioinary agenda american
baptist american
family planning international This was
Paul Lewis gig does the
government like pensa’ mission Does the
government like pensa's mission? He
may be tolerated because they still help agenda of assimilation. Is it a form of accountablility? Akha women
who pensa knew who couldn't bear children. Why? lost
collections of knowledge, missionaries lost
information and good will from villagers korean presbyterian
connection korean
presbyterians missioinaries missionaries, compare to hertzof yasef and tom training school. a pool ofconverts, forced end of ethiopian
jew missionaries
: just answer the question, what about akha culture missionaries
as an instrument of foreign policy missionaries
pick up pieces missionary
as counter balance Missions: Meese family Just say NO
to missionaries mmm
missionary military marketplace morse
brother Morse family refudiating
missioinary practice religious
policy and ethic for churches retirement
centers, the missioinary bonus OMF omf and
lewis SIL the amounts
of money available to omf, lewis brian and dapa, yote,l adjay, leo and adjew the baptist
church/hospital maesai the baptists the black
hand The
Missionaries The missionaries
blew the pillars out from under the building.
The thais were only busiy defacing it. the
missionary failure the
missionary legacy The soft
cushy missionaries jobs and their one year visas: We know what
they say they do but we don’t really know Thy
neighbors land mark, the akha and
missionaries Without a
gate by Nightengale, luka knew,
husband now dead, wife alive, reads like Sunday school wycliffe and
lewis young family deprovera,
lewis used? If one
contributes to fragmentation and disunity are they also contributing to
genetic decline? Pensa he may be
tolerated because he helps agenda of assimilation Akha council
passed over for view of OT manuscript, Sahu Misison Tactics Martha Explanations: I hope my explanation below is not too long. I was so
broke today I almost forgot to do my visa and had to borrow the $8 to do it, but was
one of the happiest days of my life
in this neck of the woods, having just signed off sending out all the email. Well, some of my friends call me a heretic because I say a
frog has a stomach but they have
never looked in the frog. What I mean is that I say what the missions are doing here
is very wrong. Many who understand
don't need much explaining,
and others don't want to know but brand me a heretic. Now if they would look in the
frog they would see, yes, it
has a stomach. In other words if the would look at what is done to the
villages by the missions they would
see that it sure isn't "thy neighbor as yourself". Now some of the first events were that some of the Akha
were converted. This was many years ago, in the early 1920's for the
Catholics and then or later for the
Baptists. But in Now I would assume that in those days with the rarity of
white people and their relative
wealth and education it would not be hard
to get an entire village to convert after one of the headmen converted or after an
Akha who had converted came and
sold them the line. We must include here that the Jesus story itself, is a good
story, it is not a story that does
harm to people, and this is
the very unfortunate baiting that so hurts people. These orgs and people appeal to
what hope people find in the
teachings of Jesus, and then use it to betray them. However, the conversion of complete villages is not very
common. Particularly when one
investigates. What one finds out is
that the village is rolled over, not converted. Certain players or dissenters in the village find a point
of contention and promising
what the other can not or will not
divides the village against the other elders often in a situation of
anger. For instance the
dissenter, more often than not,
was in a violation and went for conversion rather than cough up a fine or
reprimand. I have not found one village that fully converted. And I know one of the oldest villages in one of the
oldest converted Akha Pastors, and his village is a bloody mess, his son I know, and
his son is a very gentle
person, but very on the spot and very in the rent of things as well. We have had many
words, kind words, but he is not
happy with me for my rules. So time after time I have found that a combination of
money, promises of money and power,
promises of leverage, promises of
moral debt reduction, reactionism against existing leadership, are the elements of
conversion, and let us not leave
out heavy handed visiting preaching, heavy handed visiting white missionaries
passing out crackers, and flaunting
money, building a church, doing the one time rocket ignition of some village
improvement (which never then carries on)
and the outright confrontational verbal humiliation of elders by an outsider
backing the dissenter. In no case that I know of has an elder opted to convert and
pull the village. It is always a
very less powerful dissenter
and often the key troublemaker in the village who himself is at odds with the elders
and in some cases in danger of
village eviction. I have repeatedly pointed out this dishonest tactic to the
missionaries and pastors, and they can
not explain to me, that if they
are so honest and innocent, why it is always being employed on their shift. So maybe I have come up with this. Each community, as in globalization, is a
nodule that can be
hooked on a major bypass
road to rush full volume consumption to it. Each community is also a nodule for religion. The religious and the consumerism have ties,
the first promising the latter of
course, but they need not necessarily for sake of argument. The church is itself a
business and each community
a market. This was in my opinion the alternative that Jesus offered
people, the end of and freedom
from religion. The church has gone
to extreme lengths over the centuries to prevent this distinction. Currently, as I say, I know of no wholy converted
villages. Just the same the missions
advise that this is the best goal, the
ONLY way. Funny they say that when it
never appears to be the case. I have watched as villages were converted and it didn't
once happen without outside interference, push and payoff. Which in a way is good, because it
also says a comeback could happen. But in the case of American Indians, the proof is that the
damage and fragmentation of the
community was so severe, that the
community dies. Thus also in the book you sent me in Bay Area Tribes and
the Missions there. I think there lacks good books on the mission methodology,
and what is wrong with it. It would read like the And since the village, each village is an economic market
to the mission, the profit goes to the
pastor or regional pastor to
whom the plunder has been promised, and there is no way that he is going to stand for
a non conversion situation. So he forces it, doesn't matter, it is a
market, a religious market, and the religion
or any aspect of it has
nothing to do with the situation, he is going to corner the market. I have seen this determination in the young pastors and old
alike. They see what THEY are
going to get out of it and that is
all that matters. Matthew Martha: Unless the
villages were scattered really closely together I would say that 40 huts is
the average, 20 is less common. And lets say 20 to 40 huts with 200 to 400 people is VERY
standard here. A 20 hut
village may have some spiritual elders but not all. However in the tribal system this
is not a problem because they often "borrow" or visit to other villages,
both the regular villagers and the elders who are always on call. However, if
someone comes and converts, moves or modifies half the village, that is enough
to destroy and gut it. We see that
here. A split village is soon very
week, elders say, "what could we do, we did
not convert but the whole village was converted around us. The dynamic is always
very evil and I am so surprised that not more protest this as an extreme contradiction to anything right. The crusades
and inquisition mentality is the same today with the church. What was
done there did not change at all. And in his
book Milliken mentioned how the natives that were already controlled were used
as the front guard to gain the rest. This would
apply to food system as well. If
forestry or mission move or split the village
the food system can fall apart, since it is joint cooperative. If people can not
borrow the joint labor to work in their field at peak times, and then pay back with a
few days in the other fields, no harvest will get done before food spoils. This is
crucial. This makes
missionaries terrorists which is what they are. Genocidal
terrorists. Here the
daughters go to town and the sons sell speed pills when that happens, always the
worst relocated and split villages have the worst prostitution and drug situtions. I have even seen this when the location is
only meters away, but the situations
combined were different. One village
surviving, the other had a tiny view and
stayed alive. Here the
missions also standardly showed a fake vote by immediately moving as many people as
possible to the mission. This
happened in Keng Tung, where there are thousands of impoverished Akha around the
mission, no farm land and thus no food security. The mission is shameless about
this. And that
village has the highest rate of prostitution of girls to Hope that
helps, Matthew Dawn Project |