Totally clueless as they have always been, senior staff of Action Contre Le Faim have not a wiff of the firestorm that is brewing over their mismanagement of their NGO and tolerance of the rapes of Akha women and girls in Laos, in what we have dubbed the ACF Rape Camps in the Akha villages.
Rather they have threatened activists who reported it with legal action.
They have demanded that websites pull down their press releases.
So just who exactly did ACF think would get the story out, the Akha who they have held powerless pinned to their beds?
Damn ACF and may the last we see of them be the ashes of their international NGO. Zero Tolerance for an agency that is suppose to fight hunger but demands food and sex instead.
An agency that doesn’t dare hire or train an Akha woman in their office, so who could report all of this? “Hardship Posting” for many male staff members who enjoy the benefits of working in a region where there is little press, news or civil society to make oversight of their actions.
Are we surprised that ACF would rather cover their crime than realize what they have done.
Let it also be a warning to the organizations of NCA and GTZ who don’t have any better reports coming from the Akha.
At the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York, the Akha in person are making their case against ACF, NCA and GTZ.
GTZ noteably for stating that it was against the religion of the Akha to have mosquito nets, and thus GTZ which is a German Government agency, spends its millions, runs a few pamphlets and eco tourism to the Akha they have been ripping off for years.
Our last discussion with the Akha in Maung Sing, Laos was one of rage, Akhas so angry that they asked us to write cards in English that they could distribute to foreigners to tell how GTZ was ripping them off.
The Akha accuse NCA of selling rice intended for them, cheating them of rice for work that was in the tons, and doing projects in their village that failed.
This is not to mention that staff at NCA in Muang Long used money from NCA budget to pay army soldiers to cut Akha opium during a time when farming was already being phased out, and when it was not authorized by the home agency.
NCA cooperated in events that radically magnified the suffering of the Akha people.
NCA staff at Vientiane stated that “sex is free with Akha women”.
We’ll see about that.
