The Ride for Freedom has now arrived outside Phily, on its way some 4,000 miles by horseback and bus, to the UN at NY City.
The Ant in the Queen’s Tea Cup
Tomorrow we ride into Philadelphia to see a friend on our way to the Jersey state line and New York City which is only about 6 or 7 days away now.
We got three warmer days which has been nice, since basically a glacier crash landed on the NE part of the country. In Maryland we rode down roads that had 6 feet piles of snow still stacked up beside the road.
We will be ending our Ride for Freedom at the UN in New York. But in the mid part of April we will be attending the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues for two weeks before heading back to Oregon.
The Forum, as we call it, draws indigenous from all over the world, presenting their cases and especially networking with other activists. We have been bringing the cause of the Akha there to the UN and also at Geneva for several years now.
A letter of Allegation was sent to the Govt. of Thailand and the substance of it can be seen here, the first time the Akha got some help like this:
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/category,COI,,,THA,4a66d9a3c,0.html
The Queen’s Royal Project referred to in the paper, subsequently took their website down, linked here:
http://www.chaipat.or.th/chaipat/journal/aug03/hill_e.html
My friend in Wash. DC promised he would drop a couple copies of the Gazette off at the Thai Embassy, of our story which made the front page in many editions around the capital. The Thais did not answer phone calls on the subject of the Ant in the Queen’s Tea Cup.
http://www.gazette.net/stories/03032010/silvnew182105_32552.php
The missions of course keep taking children and calling them orphans like what happened in Haiti. A friend sent us this Native American song about missionaries:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p42RhMyf6ns
We have now been riding by horseback for more than a year, 368 days to be exact. Did we get done what we set out to do? I think so. We gave away thousands of business cards and flyers, got numerous articles printed, got repeatedly on TV about the plight of the Akha, and talked to thousands and thousands of people, all from the random walks of life, who had never heard of the Akha before.
That has made it worth it. On http://www.YouTube.com/akhazauh we have more than 400 daily videos, with more than 190,000 views.
A few more people have heard about the Akha. And thanks to our friends who helped us along the way, if it was only to drop an email.