Does anyone know who the Akha are or that the US Govt. is killing them?



Been working with the Akha for 15 years. What makes the job so hard is that few people in the US know who the Akha are, where they live or what is being done to them.

And this is strange, as they are in the heart of the CIA golden heroin triangle of air america, there are scores of spies and DEA and missionaries who know who they are and have been abusing them for years, but one would think a little of the story would leak out somehow.
But it doesn't.

Few people know that the US govt has had a hand in eradicating the Akha for years, from the drug war in Thailand to the drug war in Laos, the US DEA and other agencies have made decisions that have brought about the death of hundreds if not thousands of Akha along with the incarceration of hundreds more for incredibly long sentences based on questionable evidence, all related to drugs.

In Thailand it is the well funded drug war and in Laos it is the opium eradication, can't have a little ole mountain lady tooting on some opium up on a hill in a bamboo hut near the China border now can we?

The rapid process brought about articles like "Vicious Triangle" and "Akha Dying Like Flies in Laos". And there are many other reports.

Being in Laos now and having just come back from the north area of Luang Namtha and Maung Sing I have not seen such poor Akha villages EVER! Some villages lost 20% of their population in one year after the eradication progrom, and I was in villages which lost 10 children and two adults last year as just a sample. Fever is rife, mosquito nets are as scarce as food.

But still few people know that the US has a hand in killing a lot of these people either through gunfire, prison, disease or starvation.

Isn't it time that the US, that Americans, learned the names of the people they kill?

60,000 Akha live in Laos, 70,000 live in Thailand, 200,000 live in Myanmar and 230,000 live in China. Half a million people and most Americans don't even know they exist let alone that their government is busy killing them in a secret little dirty war.

The Akha need your help to bring accountability to the US Govt. for what they are doing, basically ethnic cleansing in South East Asia.

http://www.akha.org/