On a number of occasions it has been noted how quickly SOME people jumped to the defense of Norwegian Church Aid regarding the allegations of sexual abuse of hill tribe girls in northern Laos in NCA target villages.
Reminds one what chance a woman has defending herself when she “claims” she was “raped” in SE Asia. Supporters of NCA are not slow to jump to this angle. Little to no mention is made of the fact, that no matter where a woman was raped in SE Asia, more than likely she won’t get sympathetic ear from police or anyone. Let alone down some dusty road in one of the least visited and most remote regions of Laos, where no foreigners speak the local language, where none of the white NGO workers speak it, and where there is more than a little indication NGO staff can do what they want and get what they want.
People like NCA who brought armed men to chop down opium sure won’t be confronted about a daughter or two. But the sentiment in the villages runs much higher than that, with the litany basically the same. “They eat all of our food for free and they take our daughters as they like.” Village elder after village member in village after village tell the same story. NCA, ACF, GTZ.
NCA being no exception. The same accusation is made of ACF staff. Action Contre Le Faim. Villagers ask how an NGO that “fights hunger” can go to a village for twenty days and bring no food of their own but eat all the villagers food for a dozen staff?
We wonder too. Who’s hunger, who’s food, the villagers are plenty hungry after being relocated and told they can’t farm any of the traditional ways any more. ACF staff get paid well, all 90 of them. And ACF has plenty of budget, so why can’t they haul food to the villages and pay for any extra ingredients they need?
Further, even if they pay for the pigs, the mountain people don’t buy the pigs, they raise them, and aren’t necessarily offering to slaughter their pigs paid for or not.
Nor are they offering their daughters.
ACF of course doesn’t have many hill tribe on their staff of 90. We are told its about a dozen. And they don’t have hill tribe women on their staff. Hill tribe are paid to do the hard work and are not sent to school, or allowed to take senior administrative positions, despite the fact that it is THEIR villages that the NGO is getting money to help. Those white cushy folks and a few other staff, but not hilltribe.
Yet without the Akha who are bi-lingual, ACF could do nothing, the Akha speak Akha, the national language, and also know the villages, the work that needs to be done, and they can even do the work. The other staff can offer none of these combinations, so low and behold, the Akha get paid the least, you bet, and ACF and NCA would say that racism doesn’t start in the office? Promoted and maintained by white staff who don’t speak Akha either?
So if a 1,000 women were raped, who would know? How would the woman prove it? Show the babies?We know where they are. DNA tests paid for by who? taken from men who don’t volunteer? imposed on women who don’t want to identify themselves for fear of retaliation?
The ACF staff says that “Akha women are easy, cheap, sex is free from them”. They gloat about it, and that the Akha women stink, are dirty, will sleep with anyone, toss them a coin, makes them feel good.
NCA staff says the same thing. Maybe they eat lunch together.
They are priming the pumps for all the whoring missionaries who haven’t come here yet from the likes of OMF which still says on its website that Akha women are promiscuous. No mention of rape by NCA or ACF staff. Missionaries. NGO’s.
ACF had plenty of warning, plenty of chances. Missing all the data, missing all the cues. How you stack the staff so there will be no Akha to complain, outranked. No women to complain, cause you don’t have any Akha women in the staff, so they won’t defend their sisters or accuse the men of what they are doing.
No one on their staff who is white speaks any Akha. So how the hell will ACF know what is happening to the Akha. Non Akha people will tell the white top admin that they are busy raping the Akha girls? I don’t think so.
So the real interesting aspect of this issue is how would ACF or NCA know if their staff was raping the girls or not? How would they prevent it, how would they find out, how would the interest of an abused woman be cared for, would staff get fired or promoted?
How would an organization do, ask itself, if they are working in a minority region, with non minority dominant staff, how would they plan so that they would prevent sexual abuse in the villages?
No one is going to talk right?
No one is going to ask?
So if you get raped, you will complain to who? about who? against who? Like maybe you will waltz into the local cop shop and point the finger at some staff dude and say, hey man that guy raped me?
Hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah.
No one at ACF or NCA is asking how they know what is going on and what a girl should do? Sex is free right?
Well next time it enters the head of NCA and ACF staff to go rape some hill tribe girls in exchange for a village project maybe they should give it a second thought.
NCA and ACF should be fully investigated for how they have run their offices and staff. They should be investigated for what preventative measures they took to ENSURE hill tribe girls were not abused.
If all the Akha know, why doesn’t NCA and ACF senior staff know? If they don’t have anyone who speaks Akha, well tough luck.
Meanwhile ALL international agencies should pull all funding to NCA and ACF and to any other organization which can not show that it has solid safeguards in place to protect women from sexual abuse by NGO staff.
Both ACF and NCA should leave Laos. Once is too much.
It should be noted that both of the top administrators for Action Contre Le Faim and Norwegian Church Aid in Vientiane are WOMEN. And they should be held accountable for what they have allowed their male staff to do to ethnic Akha girls on THEIR watch.
