Matthew McDaniel of www.akha.org is in Laos seeing this firsthand.
Akha Journal: Akha babies dying like flies, mosquito nets needed.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/akha/message/476

 

 

Please forward widely. The USA and the UN are pushing this mass-murdering
drug war. In Laos it is happening by disease and starvation after relocation.

In Thailand death squads were used. See this image gallery of the 
dead and their families:

http://gallery.marihemp.com/akha

 

 

Quote from the Times UK article below:

"Critics have claimed that the Government has used harsh methods, forcibly clearing villagers from poppy-growing areas and resettling them in disease-ridden camps where many have died."

 

 

Found this below with a Google search for Laos tribes:
http://news.google.com/news?q=laos+tribes

 

UN hails the country that went cold turkey on opium
Times Online, UK - Oct 7, 2005
... The UN says that Laos, from being the world’s third biggest source of opium ... enthusiasm for the end of a vice which has plagued the hill tribes for generations ...

 

 

---------------article begins----------------

 

 

The Times [UK] October 08, 2005.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1815806,00.html

 

 

UN hails the country that went cold turkey on opium

 

From Nick Meo in Hua Phan Province, Laos
 
SINCE doctors confiscated Kua Ya’s pipe in February the septuagenarian grandmother has been forced to stop using opium. She used to smoke six pipes a night, to help her to sleep and ease her aches.

 

At the same time officials pulled up poppy plants growing on the hillsides of her village in northern Laos, part of a Communist Party programme to eradicate the drug by next year.

 
 
They have been largely successful. The UN says that Laos, from being the world’s third biggest source of opium, has reduced poppy production by 73 per cent in the past five years. This has won the Government plaudits, notably from the US.

 

The results are clear on the hillsides of Hua Phan province on the Vietnam border. Two years ago slopes that were awash with white and purple blooms now grow rice. And villages where about one in ten was an addict have undergone collective cold turkey.

 

Villagers are eager to express their enthusiasm for the end of a vice which has plagued the hill tribes for generations. Unlike Burma and Afghanistan, most of the poppies grown here have been consumed by Lao addicts, rather than exported. Opium was made illegal only in 1996.

 

Sy Kham, a blacksmith, has managed to give up on his second attempt after being threatened with jail. “It was hard, like something was eating my bones and making me vomit,” he said. “But I feel healthier and we grow rice instead so my family has more to eat.”

 

His village of Hua Moun had 24 addicts, but communal pressure forced all of them to give up. Domestic abuse is said to have dropped hugely; addicts were notorious wife-beaters.

Mrs Ya, whose teeth are still stained black from opium, agreed it had been a scourge. Several addicts she knew had plunged their families into desperate need by selling their pigs for a smoke. Most were incapable of much work.

 

But she admitted to more mixed feelings in her own case. “Nothing else works for my back trouble and nothing else gets me to sleep,” she said. “The white pills the doctor gave me are useless. I do miss my opium.”

 

Laos used to have the second highest concentration of opium addicts in the world. UN figures show that the number has dropped from 63,000 in 1998 to about 21,000 today.

 

Action was taken after the party leadership declared at the seventh congress in 2001 that Laos would be made opium-free. Old-style communist zeal was brought into the battle — the Youth Pioneers have been champion poppy-eradicators.

 

Critics have claimed that the Government has used harsh methods, forcibly clearing villagers from poppy-growing areas and resettling them in disease-ridden camps where many have died.

 

There are also fears that after the party’s triumph is declared at next year’s conference, the Government will lose interest and the poppy may creep back.

 

Opium mafias are said to have pushed deep into the jungles on the border, out of reach.

And a new problem looms — yaaba, an amphetamine produced in Burma which is becoming the new drug of choice, fuelling crime in the sleepy capital, Vientiane.
 
 
----end of article----

 

 

-----------

 

 

Maybe the UN is feeling guilty for its mass murder:

 

------------Article begins.-------

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=16234&Cr=lao&Cr1=

 

 

UN agency loan to Laos will help thousands

 

of poor women to increase farm incomes

 

 

Amb. Pathammavong and Lennart Båge sign agreement

14 October 2005 – A new $17 million loan from the United Nations Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) will help nearly 27,000 Laotians, mainly rural women and food insecure families, increase their incomes through better use of social services and natural resources as the Government improves the roads to local produce markets.

 

More than 26,200 people, including many who recently moved from the remote uplands and resettled in more accessible areas, will benefit from the new development programme in the poor districts of Attapeu and Sayabouri provinces, IFAD said. The programme will provide access to essential social services and strengthen the capacity of local community organizations to plan and manage development activities in their villages.

Costing a total of $25.9 million, the initiative will be financed in part by the $17.3 million loan and a $693,000 IFAD grant.

 

An additional $1.3 million grant will come from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and $2 million from the German Agency for Technical Cooperation and the German Development Service. The Laotian Government itself will contribute $3.4 million.

 

With this loan IFAD said it will have financed nine Lao projects for a total of $70.3 million.

 

 

-------end of UN article------

 

 

Akha Journal: Akha babies dying like flies, mosquito nets needed.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/akha/message/476

 

From: Matthew McDaniel <akhalife@...>
Date: Mon Oct 10, 2005  1:22 am
Subject: Akha Journal: Akha babies dying like flies, mosquito nets needed.

 

Dear Friends:
 
The Akha villages are many, the villagers have no mosquito nets and the babies are dying like flies, no money for the hospital, and fever rampant, not a speck of food in the houses. Malaria taking its toll, villages were relocated. 
 
Its simple. We need at least $1500 for 500 or more large mosquito nets to get out to the villagers as fast as we can and money to get some of these tiny babies into the hospital.
 
We have no more than about $50 at a time for ourselves, but do what we can for these people.
 
We are only scratching the surface.
 
Dig deep, find who can join you, do what you can.
 
Matthew McDaniel
Six of us in S.E. Asia

The Akha Heritage Foundation.
http://www.akha.org Akha Heritage Site.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Akhaweeklyjournal
Discussion http://groups.yahoo.com/group/akha
Donate Via Credit Card Paypal:
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PO Box 6073 Salem, OR. 97304 USA.
 
-----end of forwarded email---------

 

 

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