BAMBINI AKHA GB

In March 2007 I went with other people from the NGO White Tara to Thailand, the purpose of the expedition was to produce material for a fact-finding survey on life in some organizations that host Akha children. Our group, which included the producer, a cameraman, a doctor and 2 photographers, visited one of these organizations, “CHILDREN OF THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE” (CGT) in Mae Suai, in the north of Chiang Rai province. We came away from this experience with mixed impressions of the situation of the children hosted in the camp in Mae Suai. The Akha are a hill tribe that at the time had a total population of about 2.3 million people spread across five countries: Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, China and Vietnam. In all fairness, it must be said that globalization is only the latest in a series of daunting challenges that the Akha have had to face. For decades, as the inhabitants of the so-called “golden triangle”, they have been involved in the murky web of opium politics in that region. In Thailand, most Akha are stateless — they do not have documents to prove they are Thai citizens, which is clearly a major obstacle to finding work, attending school, buying land, or carrying out other day-to-day transactions. Another factor is religion, the consequences of Christian missionary activity imposed on Akha youth. Can Christianity be compatible with the community-based traditions, the original animist way of life of the Akha? One or the other is mutually exclusive.
In recent years, there has been an increasing number of non-profit organizations in northern Thailand, generally Christian-oriented but not run by missionaries per se, that house Akha children in boarding-school-type institutions.
Parents, who are often small farmers or in destitute situations, living in remote mountain villages, are reassured that the organization will educate the children, teach them practical vocational skills, and, in essence, give them a chance at a better, “modern” life.
The separation of children from their families is not painless, because it takes away labor from the families themselves, who will also be punished by the opium traffickers for the lack of labor necessary for cultivation. The problem in all this is when they reach adulthood, the children are released from these colleges, they will be able to read and write, they will have learned the art of work, but they will be introduced into society without documents, practically in the same conditions in which they were welcomed, with the difference that they will have completely lost all their Akha identity and culture.