The Akha culture was virtually destroyed between 1950 to 1990 due to the

• Opium and heroin industry and
• The complete destruction of the rain forest and
• No Rights for Children
• Narrowed, limiting their ability.
• Neglected, putting them in grave danger.
• Violated, using them for pleaser and profit. Enslaved.

The Akha Way.

The Akha tribe is one of six indigenous hill tribes  that live in the Mekong Highlands, that includes the Golden Triangle area that was given this name by Western media reporting on gun battles between large rebel drug armies in the 50’s. The Akha people live in Thailand, Myanmar (Burma) Laos, Vietnam and China in the mountains.

My grandfather  moved our village further south to escape the drug wars and abuse and slavery by drug armies. The Akha people have never formed an army to protect them self. Preferring to move away from trouble. But my uncle risked his life, as a young man worked as an undercover operative assisting the Thai military to push opium production out of Thailand.

My father and mother used to take me on a small pony every day through the forest to fields were we would grow mountain rice, we would collect food and fire wood in the forest on our way home. My mother would walk beside the pony spinning cotton for our clothes and singing at the same time.

Every year after harvest we would have the swinging festival, people would swing on very large swings out over the edge of the mountain, it was a fun happy time, with singing and dancing, we also remember past events, hardships and persecution with the older women singing historical songs to the younger people.

Hell and death on earth - A time of turbulence & trouble.

Attacked & Killed

Many villages were disrupted by opium armies, people were beaten with clubs until blood came out of their mouth and they would die. They would take everything, our animals, rice and corn, tools and take over the fields and houses. When the village people had to flee from these attacks many small babies would die, there was no food until a new crop was harvested. The village people had to clear and plough by hand with not enough tools, find seed to grow with no irrigation on very steep mountain land and in fear of being attacked. This forced the villages to locate higher and higher on the ridges of mountains surrounded by forest. In these locations there was always a shortage of water and scabies (skin disease causing intense itching and deep infections) on children became a very big problem.

Deforestation

When I was very young, men started coming nearer and nearer with elephants and trucks to take the forest trees away. This went on for a very long time, there was mountains of trees cut down and large trucks continuously taking the logs to export overseas. My father and other men in the village were not happy about this and stopped them taking some of the trees from around our village. The Akha men could see our way of life disappearing before our eyes.

Trafficking of Children....

..... started to escalate in the 60's when larger and larger jets brought more and more tourists. Thousands of young Akha tribal boys and girls were taken away illegally by force or deception; kidnaped and never seen again. Child traffickers working in networks take advantage of the stateless naive Akha children that have no legal right to live in the world. They are hunted and captured like animals, tricked, forced and sold into slavery on farms or in factories and brothel.

The Akha people DO NOT sell their children. This is a myth started by the western press interviewing people that don't speak the Akha language and have not lived with Akha people. The sick lies about Akha people are many. This is an example of travel agent advertising in Europe "Slim, sunburnt, and sweet, they love the white man in an erotic and devoted way. They are masters of the art of making love by nature, an art that we Europeans do not know." .

THE TRUTH is that children are locked up in rooms,

• they become assets more valuable than drugs being sold 16 times a day, day after day, they wake every morning knowing what they have become because of the intense pain between their legs,

• they develop every sexual disease all at one time,

*gonorrhea (inflammatory discharge),

*syphilis (secrets mucus from vagina), lesions damaging the cardiovascular & nervous systems (growths like mushrooms through out the body and in their vagina) (in damaged or diseased areas) and

*AID's (lowering resistance to infection & malignancy - fatal).

*Psychosis - a severe metal disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with reality. Children are still used, and raped.

• They can only get out of this prison if they are terminally ill or dead. With no health care - it is cheaper for their slave masters to get new children than to look after the ones they have.

Values - in a world that holds an Akha child's importance at the very lowest and the least of all people.

This international sick in-human culture is justified and defended by religion, activists, law, politics, pleaser and profit; an estimated 26 billion a year in one country. Children are forced to give up their life, for the sake of others profit and pleaser that is regarded as more important or worthy than the tribal children's lives.

Stateless = no legal right to live in the world = Danger = Loss of lives.

Relocated

Many villages were forced to  move out of the forest next to dusty roads, with no land to grow food. Work was hard to get and wages were very low. Food was scarce and many promises of schools and building material have been broken.

Fast Disintegration - The only way to survive?

My father was very concerned about the fast disintegration of the Akha culture, especially all the children disappearing.

He sold a pony to a man that said the only way your daughter will survive is to send her to school. When I was 5 years old my father took me on a long journey, first we walked through the forest to a town, we caught a bus to a large city, he then left me in a school ground. He didn’t know how to register a child in a school, he didn’t even speak the language.

Abandoned, freightened and hungry.

I was very frightened, I didn't know why he had abandoned me, I couldn’t make friends with anyone because they all spoke a different language. I found a hiding place under a stair way and cried a lot. I followed the other children to the dining room and classroom, but missed most meals the first year.

The Akha people love singing. I found the singing classes and sometimes I would forget about the pain in my heart when I was singing. When I was about 8 years old, someone wrote a song about a girl writing a letter to mum and dad to stop growing opium, my mum and dad did NOT grow opium but the school dressed me up in tribal clothes and gave me the song to sing. Everyone liked it so much they took me to different cities all over Thailand to sing to big crowds, they made a record and sold many records and used the money to build a music room for the school. For me the song brought back memories of mom, dad, my brothers and sisters. In my heart I was longing to see them again. The principle didn’t know where I had come from and I thought I was going to be expelled from the school, I was frightened and sad. But every week end we would travel on long journeys to cities all over Thailand singing.

Excited to see my family again.

After many years at the school I made new friends and excelled in my studies and became the school student leader. After 7 years I found my way home, I was so excited to see my family and friends again and share with them all the things I had learned and experienced.

Excitement turned to HORROR

But life in an Akha village was not the same as other places and my excitement soon turned to horror.

One of the first things I saw was my cousin, she was so pretty and had grown up so much, she was the same age as me, 13 years old, I started to call her name and run to her but suddenly realized something was very wrong.

A man was pointing a gun at her head and leading her away, she was too ashamed to look at me, she had tears streaming down her face.

• She died one year later at 14 years old in a brothel from continual sexual abuse screaming in agony.

• Next I found out that two of my younger sisters had died.

• All my child hood friends had been captured and taken away to be used as Child Sex Slaves. The last one died when I was 22, some found their way home and died, some never returned. One good friend came home and sat staring at the wall for a week, she never said a word about the severe physical and mental suffering she endured and quietly died.

• With all the children suffering and struggling to survive, all my excitment and achievements faded away and became unimportant.

Reflection on the Akha Way.

That school holidays was a time to reflect on what was happening, I was now part of two very different worlds. The men were still cutting the forest down and a walk that used to be beautiful jungle, rugged limestone formations and clear streams and waterfalls, was now transformed into weeds, prickles, dirty muddy water and men ready to hunt and capture the young innocent tribal children.

My parents were struggling to survive, no longer was there mushrooms, wild ginger, bananas, berries and fruit in the forest. We were eating plain rice once every couple of days. All the cotton trees had been destroyed, we no longer had filling for our pillows and mattress. Mum couldn’t find the colorful dyes for the Akha clothing. There was no longer Akha women sitting around singing and weaving cloth.

Logging and exporting forest timber. All through the mountains the beauty of the forest was destroyed and exported to rich nations. Then to our surprise Akha people were publicly blamed for the logging of forests using swidden farming as an example of Hill Tribe evil ways. Soil errosion and flooding was all blamed on us.

Trafficking of children was wide spread, the beautiful Akha children are hunted, tricked and captured for pleasure and profit. Suffering years of torment and humiliation with only AIDS to release them from the prison of pain.

My people - Akha people stateless, rejected by the world with no legal right to live in the world, having the shame of lies of selling our children and being a scape goat for floods, soil erosion and deforestation. But boosting the economy of a nation through tourism with Akha photos, painting, handcraft being used on all the tourist posters and bragged about Akha being the treasures of a kingdom. But the children being used in the sickest inhuman and cruelest industry known to man - child sex slavery.

I was thirteen years old confused and frightened about my families future. I went back to the city and enrolled in a high school, I worked part time and later returned to the village to get my surviving sister and brother and enrolled them in schools. We worked at night and went to school in the day. I worked hard graduated and worked in an Architectural office as an interior designer.

Australia

I travelled to Australia to do more study in Architecture and English and started a successful business and lectured in a collage in Australia.

The illegal opium and heroin industry had decimated many villages and started migrations to safer places, governments were moving villages, Akha people were loosing farmland, people were being killed for growing opium and people were killed for not growing opium. Babies were dying of hunger and sickness. Children were displaced and hunted by traffickers. All I got from home was a stream of bad news about people struggling and dying.

Many Akha people were used as slaves for armies.

"We were chained together and had to carry loads beyond what a human being should carry. When we escaped we ran for three days and nights we were like frightened animals, many of our friends had been killed in front of us. We didn't know were we were going or what to do. We were hiding for years in the jungle on the ridge of a mountain we knew the armies travelled in the valleys. Thank God for David & Asa they helped us raise and educate our daughter and now she is in teachers collage"

The birth of Rescue Mission for Children

I received a phone call from home saying "the last of my child hood friends had just passed away after spending years of torment as a child sex slave." We were both 22 years old.

She was the last of my child hood friends but she wouldn't be the last Akha child to be captured suffer physical and emotional pain and die in their early twenties.

* The tears wouldn’t stop.

* The pain in my heart was overwhelming.

* My emotions wouldn't allow me any peace, I felt betrayed, abandond, misunderstood, guilty, alone, rejected, deep sorrow.

* I had to return to the Mekong Highlands and help the Stateless children to survive and be successful.

Rescue Mission for Children was started 1994 and registered as a tax exempt organization in Australia & USA. And a Non Profit organization in Thailand.

We have to build the capacity of the children. We have to give them the skill, knowledge and resources so they can Maintain their Dignity

• to reach the high and honorable rank of a free human being
• to have the qualities worthy of respect as a human being
• to have a sense of pride in ones self, self esteem and confidence to look another human being in the eye, without feeling like a failure or inferior.

Ezekiel 34:

v 21...all the weak ones were pushed with side, shoulder & horns and scattered.

v5 ....and they became food for all the beasts of the field when they were scattered.

Moey was taken at gun point when she was 13 years old into a brothel.

She died when she was 14 screaming in agony while being constantly raped for a year.

Reclaiming our history in it’s totality means that we no longer relate to our past as years in which only good times can be remembered, and bad times need to be forgotten.........

.... BUT as opportunities for an ongoing conversion of the heart.

If we are to be truly ready for new tasks, truly free to be sent into a new and vitally important mission, our entire past must become the energy that moves us towards the future.

Rescue Mission For Children is to provide programs and services to children in danger of Sex Slavery.

But I coundn't stop thinking about the Akha Children struggling and dying through no fault of their own. I had to do something to help them.

UN report 380,000 stateless children without education are in danger 2011