Dear Friends: With our second donor we now have two batteries and have only two more to go. $311.00 each, and we thank you so much for your help. Signs should be edited at the sign company by the end of next week, so we are looking forward to getting the signs up on the bus after that. By the way, we continue to work on the issue of US weapons aid to Thailand. It turns out that according to the GAO, very little vetting of people who committed human rights violations in Thailand was done between 2000 and 2005 according to the US Embassy in Bangkok's own admission. This means that the people who killed Akhas during that time, including 2003, the people who killed other hill tribes and Thais, are walking around pretty much free to be recipients of what guns the US gives Thailand, in direct violation of the Leahy Ammendment. Fortunately we have been making some progress on collecting and building a list of victims and perpetrators, and we are asking the State Department if these perpetrators are on lists to be restricted access to US weapons and Equipment? But with the news from Colombia via the Biden report, Colombia has admitted to killing civilians to fill quotas for a failed drug war. We hope that this suspends aid to Colombia and that the same will be the result for aid to Thailand's military and police, both of which the US trains and equips. Sincerely, Matthew McDaniel
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: https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=akha%40akha.org PO Box 6073 Salem, OR. 97304 USA.
