The Ethnic Minority Challenge

Hello everyone:

Most of you are sleeping now but we just finished the first part of our day (Thursday, Jan. 28) here in Chiang Mai. We visited the offices of International Justice Mission here and are now finishing lunch at a vegetarian restaurant which Faa picked for us. She knows all the good places to eat!

Most of the work of IJM here involves advocating on behalf of ethnic minority people. At first, they started rescuing young girls from forced prostitution and attempting to bring perpetrators to justice. Then they conducted a study and discovered that stateless children (those from ethnic minorities who though were born in Thailand are not considered citizens) were more at risk for falling into the hands of the thugs of the sex trade industry. So they refocused their efforts now and are working with poor ethnic minorities in several villages to walk them through the complicated process of advocating for them to eventually gain their Thai citizenship.

This process is fraught with peril, involving, often times, dealing with corrupt officials who considered ethnic minorities the scourge of the earth, illiterate villagers who can't tell when they are taking advantage of and a system of thousands of years that is stacked up against them in every turn. As usual, the church is lagging behind in seeing the need to work on behalf of the poorest of the poor. So one of IJM's emphasis is to do outreach to the churches. They haven't been very successful at that to this point but continue to work hard.

Ethnic minorities don't have the right to leave their immediate location. They don't have the rights of education or citizenship. They can't own land or have a small business. They are the bottom of the bottom of the totem pole. Everyone feels entitled to step on them and cannot understand why anyone would want to help them. They missionary we visited yesterday told us that he tried to work with government officials to start a school in a building on the property they live now. When they found out that the school would benefit ethnic minority children, they not only denied the request, but were very upset that the missionary was working on their behalf.

When they were looking for property to rent, one of the places they went to the owner looked at the Akha boy that they had taken in and said to him in Thai, "What are you doing here black boy. Go back to the mountains." Imagine an adult saying this to a 4 year old boy and you will begin to understand the extent of the prejudice that exists here against ethnic minority people.

Faa and her sister, of course, are Akha. They can tell you a thousand stories of discrimination, humiliation, neglect, and scorn. Their stories will break your heart but the good news is that these two young ladies dared to dream and trust God to help them fulfill these dreams. We are seeing the beginning of the beginning of their dreams coming to fruition and we praise God we are having a little part in it.

Viva the ethnic minority people of Thailand. Christ died for them too!

Pastor Ivanildo C. Trindade
itrindade@woostergrace.org