In the north of Laos, the US and UNODC decided that there would be complete opium prohibition, no matter how or what the cost.
They lived up to that.
They eradicated most of the opium, and a few thousand children.
But events have names and faces and this one was no exception.
We can call them the dogs of war. Because they all played crucial parts in building the “ovens”.
Who can say which one did more evil, but they all got paid well for the role they did play.
Did they act as a part of their agency or did they act on their own while concealed in an agency?
Krister Winer, he worked for Norwegian Church Aid. Helped supply arial photography to the eradicators. Why would you do that? In a telephone interview with workers with Norwegian Church Aid, they said that they continued to support the eradication efforts and denied that any people had died as a result of the way in which the projects were carried out.
GTZ, the large German Govt. agency located in Muang Sing, what role did they play? Reports say that what ever occurred, they went along with it willingly, as if they didn’t even notice what was happening to the people. They did not oppose the forced relocations despite the fact that it was obvious how many people were dying.
Finn Riske-Neilsen ran UNDP, Antonio Maria Costa ran UNODC (Office of Drugs and Crime was UNDCP).
Mr. Halvor Kolshus, a Norwegian, was jubilant to work closely on the project as an employee of UNDCP and make sure all goals were reached on time, no matter what the cost. He helped maintain the death penalty despite EU objections, he struck villages off the list for getting any aid if he thought they might still have an opium field. But his own life or livelihood was never insecure.
He now works on a new “development” project in Vietnam with the Swedish Development Agency SIDA. His salary was and is in excess of $10,000 per month.
The US opium eradication efforts in Phongsali area continue. The Government of Laos has NOT been told that eradication of opium will increase the use of injected drugs like heroin, which are faster to use, and HIV. Yet studies in the border regions of China, Myanmar and Lao-Vietnam, show that once the users have switched to heroin over opium, HIV rates soar.
In Thailand, the eradication of opium led to a boom in meth, ecstacy and other more dangerous drugs. Yet this was clearly spelled out decades ago, what will follow on the heals of opium eradication. For the moralists, even an HIV epidemic is acceptable as compared to opium or needle clinics (Vancouver BC. Needle Clinics opposed by US), as “due punishment to the users.” But ultimately the financial and human cost of the problems caused by replacement drugs and the militarization-criminalization of the Drug War does show up at the doorstep of governments.
All the reports state clearly that the mountain people are some of the poorest, and there is no excuse that anyone would eliminate one food and economic system, without knowing what the consequences would be. The attitude is that a few dead people is acceptable for the end goal, the end justifies the means.
Unless you are the dying children.
Thousands died and continue to die, none of the white people who made the genocide happen are held accountable, but their names are adding up. They drive comfortable vehicles, take salaries up to and well BEYOND $10,000 per month.
The most wealthy and powerful of the world are not held accountable, and it is little wonder that the world is descending into mayhem and war.
Mr. Halvor, Winer, and a score of others need to be held accountable for the wanton death they have brought to so many in Laos.
For more information, do google searches on the names:
Krister Winer
Halvor Kolshus
Norwegian Church Aid
David J. Wise
Sida
Opium eradication in Laos
Resettlement in Laos
UNODC
UNDCP
Antonio Maria Costa
Check all links in the ongoing comments section.
These are extreme allegations against organizations and named individuals, however, there is no substance to the entry. You cannot accuse people of mass-murder based on this flimsy entry.
Well, as some one so eloquently have pointed out below, this entry is full of accusation and no substance and the author doesn’t even seem to bother to answer the questions asked. I have seen many of these “so called” diaries on Kos and Booman and what is puzzling is that they are short, full of accusations and provides no substance or evidence to support these accusations.
Another point worth while mentioning is the tendency of these people only to write diaries on the War on Drugs and the eradication of the poppy crops, nothing else seems to matter, not the starvation in Africa or the war in Iraq, but only the War on Drugs issue and the eradication of Opium poppies, go figure.
If aid work in general are deemed “post-colonial” work, well…..Lo and Behold! Let’s end all aid work at once.
Colonialism or post-colonialism has nothing to do with it. These are private NGO’s and are on the ground doing aid work in developing countries. There are a lot of Norwegian aid organizations and workers all around the world most of them doing commendable work. Some projects are sometimes ending up as counterproductive, but colonialism, hardly. I don’t know the details for the aid work mentioned above, but accusing aid organizations of genocide and extermination….well, it speaks for itself.
On a last note, the eradication of poppy planting is in itself commendable, in my opinion; the problem is that the natives and farmers affected by this policy must be given an alternative to the poppy farming, that’s where the aid money ought to go. This championing of the indigenousness right to grow poppy plants and Opium is at best misguided and at worst a front for something more sinister.
They want links they can click, from a corporate western paper.
This is a scurilous and despicable diary. Who did this mass murder? Was it direct or indirect? How did the children die? What is the causal link between the actions of the Norwegians and the dead children?
During WWII, FDR and Churchill led a war against Hitler. Hitler killed many Jews, gypsies, Romanians, imbeciles and so forth. Thus, FDR killed thousands of gypsies. Right? Same logic as this diary, correct?
Maybe you could type a few things into Google and educate yourself?
What, you want to be spoon fed?????
If you don’t know, its not the children’s fault, or our fault for not owning a TV station, camera crews, forensic people, researchers who can comb the files we can give them.
The whole world is being butchered, and western people, fat on their last meal, keep telling the dead and dying to prove it.
That’s half the problem, while their countrymen make it happen.
That is what the list of names is there for. You can volunteer for us, if you are concerned with enough data being presented, we’ll give you enough people to interview till hell freezes over. But first you need to buy a video camera, a computer for processing mpeg files, so that they clips can be put to the web, and hire an article writer who can stay up all night submitting stories to mainline newspapers and magazines and writers forum websites and blogs. You need a good healthy expense account so you can go and hang out in foreign countries and wait for all these thugs to come by, so that you can talk to all the other writers writing for BBC, the Economist, etc, all links you will find when you research the names we gave you to put into Google. Then you can call their credibility into question, not ours. Tom Fawthrop, look him up, “Akha dying like flies in Laos.” “Vicious Triangle” 2005 Opium Report on Laos.
After that you can read thousands of pages of pdf files produced by Norwegian Church Aid, UNDP, UNICEF, UNDCP, UNODC, presentations and speeches by Antonio Maria Costa, articles out of the Vientiane Times, Bangkok Post, The Nation (Thailand), NGO reports, Consultant reports. Then you can go and interview all the people yourself.
You can go to the villages, you can hire translators, you can ask how many people died, if you stay a few minutes you can even watch them die, and then you can ask them to take you to the cemetary where they buried people at the rate of two and three per day.
All the problems that the EU is warning are invovled with total opium eradication in Afghanistan have already happened in Laos. Don’t expect the Americans to admit, not even the tourists, its not cool to be anti American behaviour. Don’t expect the US Embassy in Laos to discuss it openly. No more than when they discussed it when the Thais murdered thousands of their own over THAT drug war.
Then go to Vientiane, to the Office of National Statistics and buy their reports, done by many agencies, about mortality rates, access to medical care, in “normal” communities, let alone communities which had their chief source of income cut off in a couple years or less.
Then read all the reports on forced resettlement in Laos, all a branch of the opium eradication demands made by the west. What happens when you force a village to move from 1200 meters to 400 meters, down into the malaria zone, next to a dirty river. Everybody gets malaria. Cerebral malaria. PF. And you’ll be lucky to be able to buy the medicine let alone know if its counterfeit or not. Oops, there went the brain stem.
A week or so ago, all the Agencies got together to congratulate themselves on the complete elimination of opium in Laos. Congratulations, too bad all the eradicated children couldn’t show up.
Then go find a consultant who is going to publish all the facts for you so that they can be thrown out of the areas they document. So that there will be no one there at all.
Its not happening in Darfur, its not happening in Iraq, its not happening in Myanmar, its not happening in Afghanistan and it sure isn’t happening in Laos.
That is how flimsy this all is.
First of all, I am both sceptical and suspicious to diaries written without any links or possibility to verify or check what the author is stating. Called it dilettantism, but hey, that is just me.
You seem to be on a mission against the “Western conspirators” trying to enslave the rest of the world. Well I do not agree with your assumptions. Again, yes the “west” has done many bad things in the past and are continuing to do so today, but they are not alone. Using words like genocide and extinction doesn’t add credibility to any diary if not supported by sufficient and irrefutable facts. Accusing people of genocide is an extremely grave accusation and will only backfire on the accusers if it isn’t sufficiently backed up by facts.
Yes, I have now goggled on the topic and found nothing what so ever to support these accusations. On the contrary, I have found links that proves the opposite that the Norwegian Church Aid are helping children in Laos out of slavery! I am not making the accusations, you are and thus are responsible for submitting facts that support your statements. I have goggled many of the names you have listed and find nothing incriminating against them so this whole affair smears of a smear campaign only supported by pure speculations.
Concerning the abduction of children, read this and bear in mind that this is the area of the Golden Triangle, an area infested with drug traffickers and Drug Lords enslaving the impoverished farmers.
Too conclude it is not the Aid organizations who are responsible for the deaths of poor people and children that is poverty, on the contrary the Aid organizations are alleviating and helping many impoverished farmers out of their hopeless situation and responsible for saving many children’s lives.
Are you in Laos?
The people we are talking to are, and more of them are going.
Are you in the villages in Laos?
How do you know anything about what is going on in those villages?
Will you go to the village and post a link there?
Will you give up your paycheck to go?
Will you hire a translator, will you talk to the village heads and ask how many died, will you talk to all those people sneaking around Laos, trying to keep their visas, who know what happened, cause they saw it first hand but are afraid to speak for fear of retribution?
You speak quite directly about what you have not seen first hand.
Do you know how many different kinds of malaria there are, and where it is worst in Laos, such as in Muang Long district? Where will these people go to get medical aid and medicine? Will it be counterfeit? Why did someone stand by while these people were relocated from non malaria areas (where the opium was grown) to areas full of cerebral malaria, where they can’t grow opium?
How does Norwegian Church Aid rescue the children of Laos, if they paid people to cut down the opium and then the children died. And the elderly, and a LOT of others? How exactly does that rescue the children? These are self perpetuating agencies, they always got a new children, they just buried their last one.
You sound like you are in a pretty safe place to be talking about people dying in a place you may never have been to. Oh, you clicked a link on google. Good.
Are you in Laos?
The people we are talking to are, and more of them are going.
Are you in the villages in Laos?
How do you know anything about what is going on in those villages?
Will you go to the village and post a link there?
Will you give up your paycheck to go?
This kind of argumentation speaks for itself. It basically says you have not been to Laos and thus have no right to oppose my views. Well, you posted the diary here and expect people to oppose it. That’s how democracy works in case you have forgotten. I have found more than enough links and information to dismiss you accusations as mere….well, accusations and political opinions with a bias and a certain agenda.
(…..)will you talk to all those people sneaking around Laos, trying to keep their visas, who know what happened, cause they saw it first hand but are afraid to speak for fear of retribution?
Now isn’t that convenient…..hard to find witnesses to support extreme accusations, because they are mere accusations and nothing else.
You speak quite directly about what you have not seen first hand.
Well, I am not the only one and you don’t need first hand experience to acquire knowledge. Why then go to school? Granted first hand experience is an excellent way of acquiring additional knowledge, but they have to be your own personal experiences and not some one else’s and they have to one of many sources of knowledge not the only source of knowledge, which your diary seems to be based on since you didn’t provide any additional sources in it. You have added a few in your comments, but no one have any information that backs up your accusations of extermination and genocide done by the NCA.
1. Do you know how many different kinds of malaria there are, and where it is worst in Laos, such as in Muang Long district? Where will these people go to get medical aid and medicine? Will it be counterfeit? 2. Why did someone stand by while these people were relocated from non malaria areas (where the opium was grown) to areas full of cerebral malaria, where they can’t grow opium?
How does Norwegian Church Aid rescue the children of Laos, if they paid people to cut down the opium and then the children died. And the elderly, and a LOT of others? How exactly does that rescue the children? These are self perpetuating agencies, they always got a new children, they just buried their last one.
You seem to imply that Aid work is all about upholding traditional ways of life no matter what. Aid work is primarily to assist in a time of crisis or in a period of transition. The problem is not the Aid organizations or their workers, but the policies implemented and their unforeseen consequences. In fact I am quite sure that hadn’t the Aid organizations been there from the start the situation would have been much worse. But my point is not really whether the NCA rescue the children or not, even though I am sure they are, my point is your grave accusations against people and organizations without proof.
You sound like you are in a pretty safe place to be talking about people dying in a place you may never have been to. Oh, you clicked a link on google. Good.
Yes, for the time being that’s all I can do.
Religious societies and their exploited influence seem to be the driving force behind everything from wiretapping to killing innocent children across the world. Just as Wade’s ‘Sure Foundation’ sold ministry degrees by correspondence to travel and accumulate converts, it also likely financed illegal arms sales to kill.
Read Tom Fawthrop’s articles, then FIND him, and ask him to take you to Laos and prove what he saw, get the BBC camera crew to go along.
Then got talk to Action Contre Le Faim. They are so scared to publish their report, you can’t even get an electronic copy. Maybe you can get a hard copy, maybe.
Their report on Resettlement in Laos.
Then go and get Ian Baird’s report, Aiding or Abetting, and look who is listed for funding the eradication of opium, the relocation of villages. Oh, nice that you could mention the minor point of what the people should and shouldn’t have after their opium gets cut, while forgetting that Britain built an empire on opium profits.
The US is free to eradicate, Norwegian Church Aid was involved in helping pay to have all the opium cut down,and they you can dig up the local consultants and ask them to take your film crew to go and see where all the people died and are still dying. The Norwegian Church Aid involvement is readily available on the web.
While the US Govt. and the UNODC and Norwegian Church Aid will be free to do what they do, you will not be so lucky to document it as long as you want, in a limited access country, which these agencies KNEW all along, but you won’t come away empty handed either.
And others of us don’t have time to sit all day and play keyboard state department at the question desk, and do the investigations in the these countries at the same time. But you go to Laos, and we will give you all the leads to keep you busy for at least a year. Take your wallet. Click click click.
Opium eradication is about western prohibition being forced on the poor segment of the world, like coca in South America, while the west can buy up the planet and enjoy all their own excesses. Tazmania, India, Turkey and numerous other western countries grow and sell their opium to the international market, Laos was not allowed to do so, despite the fact that the Lao government saw this as a good idea. Why the double standard?
Afghanistan opium has doubled since being occupied by the west.
We present information allowing the clever to find out a lot more if they want to. Anyone can do the research, on the chance that there are in fact a handful of agencies and ngo’s operated by people who eradicated the opium and a whole lot of children who died in the aftermath, much higher than the national averages of Laos.
You think that Norwegian Church Aid didn’t work to eradicate the opium? It says they did right on their website. Or are you saying the children aren’t dead? I’m not clear about this.
Since Action Contre Le Faim and other agencies have stated that the children have died, and Norwegian Church Aid stated that they helped get rid of the opium, I am not clear what information we haven’t included, course you could have found this for yourelf on the web, if you had typed in all those names.
We do not post one time and walk away, we post maybe for a year, and we are not able, due to OTHER constraints, to post all in one night.
“Then got talk to Action Contre Le Faim. They are so scared to publish their report, you can’t even get an electronic copy. Maybe you can get a hard copy, maybe. Their report on Resettlement in Laos.”
I have a meeting with the General Director of Action Contre la Faim next week. I will ask him about that and come back to BT.
Yeah, ask them why they don’t post “Is Resettlement a Solution to Human Development” in electronic form on their website? Its an ACF report. What are they afraid of? Why all the sneaking around?
Why not put it on their home page?
However, Aiding or Abetting, produced by another agency is availble, much the same story.
Aiding or Abetting
http://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/99/Laos.html
http://www.probeinternational.org/pi/documents/mekong/AidingOrAbetting.pdf
Extreme allegations for extreme events.
We would like to see UNODC’s Antonio Maria Costa in the Dock, answering questions about what he knew and when he knew it.
Do you have suggestions on how we can do this, and who has jurisdiction over crimes committed by western people in Laos? The Hague? But maybe Laos is not a signator to the International Criminal Court. Maybe Antonio knew this, does that mean he should get off?
The right to food, (A basic UN human right) means that if you cut people’s opium and thus eliminate their food supply, you have denied them their right to food, and in the context that it has occurred, “Drug War” this makes it a war crime, or some other crime, starving people to death, knowing that they DON’T have an alternative source of food, and its not just a matter of hoping, or preferring that they have something in place, they didn’t, and they died. Period. So it was a crime, and Antonio and his friends should go to jail and face charges of genocide.
UNODC forced the eradication, Norwegian Church Aid took millions (check UNDCP website) to eradicate the opium, Halvor Kolshus was an adviser, armed individuals lived in the villages, ate all the livestock, and forced the villagers at gunpoint to cut their own opium and then left. Families were torn apart, villages forced to move, at gunpoint, people thrown into prison. The Lao National Statistics Office says this was done to the poorest of the poor. That is HEROIC. Antonio may be proud of himself. But he should still go to jail.
These people put events in motion. People die. They go to their next posting. Shit happens.
So I come to your country and tell you that growing wheat is a crime, cause it makes people in my country who don’t have self control FAT and so I burn all your wheat fields, and your children starve to death. Tough luck.
Not to be discouraged, thanks to all the people who know what this is about and know what data we can’t risk publishing to this web site, or UNCLE SAM will come looking for us with a sharp fish knife in the night.
Yeah, and there needs to be a place to take Norwegian Church Aid to court as well. And a bunch of other people, the names on the list gets longer the more one looks at who helped.
Some idea what Antonio, Halvor, Winer, all these people got paid while they ensured other people and their children would starve to death or die of disease?
Would guess anywhere from $5000 to $10,000 per month plus benefits, perks, vehicles.
David J. Wise, he was the NAS guy who worked for the US, mentioned in the reports. Rumor is he is in Afghanistan now.
BBC just did a story on TV about how important it is to eradicate the opium in Afghanistan. “Their only source of income.”
This article is hurling around accusations that are not at all backed up by evidence.
Giving some random names and organisations to google, as evidence of such serious accusations is simply not good enough.
I have googled some of this names and organisations, and it gives nothing of evidence to support these accusations against Norwegian aid-workers.
Singling out one aid organisation being responsable for this, not the UN, not authorities in the country, but specifically the Norwegian Church Aid, is absurd and particular so when not giving any direct prof of this.
It also could creates the suspicion of someone having an agenda, and that is not bringing the truth about.
All this gives me associations to many of the neo-conservative net-sites, full of accusations and smear against others.
That any Aid-organisations with a minimum of credibility is against drugs, should really come as no surprise, in fact the UN-system is also organised around the fight against drugs, this is of course nothing specific Norwegian.
In the process of switching the crop-growth from opium-related products, time and assistance must be given in sufficient amounts to prevent or compensate any hard-ship in the transition-period, if this has not been the case that is of course serious and absolutely troubling for the international community, but this is of course the responsibility of the government of Laos, and the international community, including Norway, but of course not exclusively, as this article is trying to imply.
http://www.unodc.org/laopdr/en/press_release_2002-02-13_1.html
or:
From NCA website:
“Asia
Financially, a large engagement in Asia is Afghanistan.
In India and Bangladesh we support church organisations who carry out extensive development work in the rural areas, especially targeted towards women.
In Laos, Norwegian Church Aid works with community development in the fighting against cultivation of opium. We are also working to prevent the spreading of Aids. In Laos, we have established a branch of the Eye Health Clinic that has been in operation for many years in Nepal. In Vietnam NCA has recently taken over the responsibility for a rural development project for the poorest in the country. (no mention of alternative food supply or mortality rates, no mention that they paid for people to go and cut the opium. One report says that up to 20% of villages died post relocation in the first year which occurred during the eradication process. But the reality is that death rates were often much higher than this.)
Norwegian Church Aid channels close to 60 million NOK to Asia every year. This represents approximately 20 per cent of the total budget. “
Where Halvor went:
http://chiase.org/
Dying like flies:
http://www.uwip.org/source/Akha%20Dying%20Like%20Flies%20in%20Laos.doc
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4673109.stm
http://www.economist.com/World/asia/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4284460
First of all, I am not denying that the NCA or the UN are involved in projects in Laos or Afghanistan. What I am categorically denying is the accusations you are hurling against these NGO’s. You are commendably providing proof that these NGO’s are using a huge amount of money in Aid in these places something that inevitably leads to good things and benefits a lot of people.
Second, some of the links you have submitted refer to articles writing about programs conducted by the government of Laos and not NGO projects. Especially the BBC article talks about the resettlement of people from the hillsides to the lowlands leading to diseases and bear no direct links to the campaigning against opium per se.
The high mortality rate amongst the resettled people in Laos is an effect of wrong national policy and the wrong tools used by the government to eradicate the opium economy, but it has nothing to do with the NGO’s and their Aid projects.
Many of the other links are refering to reports about how the Aid work is conducted and some of the problems they are facing and provides no evidence of your accusations of genocide and extermination policies.
Norwegian Church Aid IMPLEMENTED the project to eliminate opium in Long district. The were NOT casual observers, and they were NOT the only or biggest player in Laos, but in LONG district, they were there, they helped eradicate the opium, there STILL is not enough food there, the people are STILL dying, and NCA knows very well about this.
What would be very good is for you to go to LONG district of Laos, in Luang Namtha province and see for yourself who is dying, then you would know first hand.
Further, the policies that the Lao government internalized, are NOT policies that they devised, but policies that were forced on them by UNODC, the US, and promoted by NGO’s. This is clearly known in Laos and Aiding and Abetting is one document that refers to this.
But once again, NCA still runs an office in Long District. A very quick trip to the villages with a translator will tell you how many have died and how many are dying and what the food supply is, and NCA implemented the project in that region, so just exactly who else was involved? Halvor? We know that. But NCA was his foot soldier in Long District. UNDCP paid for it, now called UNODC.
There are few people in Laos who will deny what a disaster has happened in these mountains and what caused it and who supervised. Long District was NCA’s territory. Other agencies had other territories, are still there, and are still largely disfunctional, however not underfunded. What you are debating is that these people were not there, did not support the resettlement and eradication policy which they did and that the children did not die and are not still dying, which of course is still the case.
What more evidence do you need to launch your research project that you fund than that? First make a trip to Laos, and prove that the children are not dying, and that the agencies and NGO’s are providing effective aid with their good budgets and salaries.
If they were, there would not be the conditions today that exist there. Symantics can not cover up the deaths of thousands of people, and that should remain the point here. NCA had a hand in it. Everyone in Laos says that there WAS NOT ADEQUATE PREPERATION BEFORE THE OPIUM ERADICATION AND RESETTLEMENT WAS IMPLEMENTED. NCA helped in that eradication. THEN the children died. Now if they want to say they made a mistake, then that is another story.
Norwegian Church Aid IMPLEMENTED the project to eliminate opium in Long district. The were NOT casual observers, and they were NOT the only or biggest player in Laos, but in LONG district, they were there, they helped eradicate the opium, there STILL is not enough food there, the people are STILL dying, and NCA knows very well about this.
Yes, because they were invited to be there by the UN and the national government. The elimination of Opium farming in itself is not the cause of death to so many people, it is the use of the wrong means, forced resettlement, and incompetent planning of UN and government officials alike.
Further, the policies that the Lao government internalized, are NOT policies that they devised, but policies that were forced on them by UNODC, the US, and promoted by NGO’s. This is clearly known in Laos and Aiding and Abetting is one document that refers to this.
The UN and NGO’s have neither the interest nor the means to force a government to do anything. The NCA and other organizations have more than enough projects and Aid relief programs around the world and thus wouldn’t be there if they were not welcome. The decisions are based upon government policies in consultancy with the UN.
But once again, NCA still runs an office in Long District. A very quick trip to the villages with a translator will tell you how many have died and how many are dying and what the food supply is,(…..)
Yes, in order to be able to coordinate their program and assist the Laotian people they must have. I do not deny that people are dying, but I do not believe that the NCA is responsible for these deaths for the reasons I have mentioned in one of my comments above.
(…..)What you are debating is that these people were not there, did not support the resettlement and eradication policy which they did and that the children did not die and are not still dying, which of course is still the case.
No, that is not what I am debating. What I am debating and largely refute is your accusations that the NCA and relief organizations are directly responsible for what you called “exterminations” and “a genocide” in your diary. They certainly supported the eradication of opium plants and people might die of malaria and other diseases but that is not the responsibility of the NGO’s that is the responsibility of the national government and what seems to be incompetent planning and even a lack of Aid from the UN.
What more evidence do you need to launch your research project that you fund than that? First make a trip to Laos, and prove that the children are not dying, and that the agencies and NGO’s are providing effective aid with their good budgets and salaries.
Once more I do not deny that people are dying and the Aid from agencies and NGO’s on the ground might even be
inefficient but they are neither responsible for a genocide nor the fact that people are dying of malaria, what they could be blamed for is a lack of competence and the providing of efficient and timely Aid needed.
1 .NCA had a hand in it. Everyone in Laos says that there 2 .WAS NOT ADEQUATE PREPERATION BEFORE THE OPIUM ERADICATION AND RESETTLEMENT WAS IMPLEMENTED.
(…..)WAS NOT ADEQUATE PREPERATION BEFORE THE OPIUM ERADICATION AND RESETTLEMENT WAS IMPLEMENTED.
Yes, and that is ultimatly responsibility of the national government and to a certain extent the UN coordinators.
These links only proves my point, they represent no evidence of the absurd accusation of being responsable of killing children, and they only high-light the question of why hurling this accusation against one small aid-organisation, hmmm…
If people have had difficulties in the transition-period, that is of course troublesome for the international community, and questions could be asked about why this was not taken into account by the international community.
The serious accusations against one particular aid agency still seems strange though.
Itis not an absurd accusation, it is what they were involved in. But you need to go to Laos to see that for yourself.
If you stay a few minutes in the villages, you can see the children die yourself.
But please don’t believe the absurd accusations about Darfur either.
1)Project Site: Long District, Luang Namtha Province, Lao PDR
Project beneficiaries Highlanders from 4 different ethnic minorities in 19+ (planned) 37 villages, plus local
government officials and institutions.
Government counterpart: Luang Namtha Provincial Government
Executing Agency: Norwegian Church Aid (NCA)
Funding Agency: United Nations International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) and NCA
Project period 1993 – 1995 Pilot phase
1996 – 1998 Implementation Phase 1
1999 -2000 Implementation Phase 2
Jan – Aug 2001 Bridging period
(Sep 2001 – Aug 2004 Planned Implementation Phase 3)
Yes, people may have been dying in Laos because of an implemented policy of the authorities in the country, but that is of course and by no means the responsibility of an NGO or aid-organisation, they neither have the authority nor the interest in implementing national policies.
The aid-organisations are present to give relief and assistance in times of trouble, they are present in Laos because the authorities in Laos want their presence, if they had not been wanted, they would not have been there.
Implying that NGO’s or aid-organisations are the cause to the suffering, or in any way are responsable for a policy that may have gone to far to quickly, is absurd.
The policy implemented in fighting drugs by the Laos government, even with pressure from outside, is the responsibility of the national authorities, and the fight against drugs is widely accepted as positive in it self.
If the world community has failed to assist in times of trouble in Laos, because of this national policy, that I agree is troublesome, but that is the responsibility of the world community, not a single NGO, trying to give relief and assistance.
So your accusation is way off reasonable critic, and turned completely up-side down.
Ah, stupid white people, trying to make excuses for excessive colonialism. (How much is excessive? the parrot asks.)
Always amazes me when the KKK at a hanging blame it on the black folk.
No wonder the white folk keep getting their embassies burned for going to foreign lands, murdering people, insulting their religion, enslaving them, rigging the game, getting paid millions to do it, and all claim to be the innocent victims of a big misunderstanding or prejudice when they get caught.
Yeah, its a sad day when you got to stop being a colonial?
Well, I took a look at the reports, looks like the sleazy Norwegians are in the thick of it in Laos. Head of the UNDP, Finn Reske Neilsen, a Norwegian, Halvor Kolshus who was the big cheese at UNDCP, a Norwegian, and handing all the big cash to Norwegian Church Aid. Never liked Norwegians anyway, but that looks like a rigged game if there is one.
Yeah, denying all the people who died, naw, they didn’t die, the wankers at NCA were just trying to liberate their souls a little, trying to feed them children, aw, just a big misunderstanding, well maybe their God wasn’t sleeping after all and when all the dead babies souls added up the Karma was just too much and he just stopped counting and hopped off the mountain and went down to the beach and drowned all them Norwegian paedophiles on the beach in Thailand along with a few Swedes.
Course, no one mentioned all the kids and under aged girls and rental wives got drowned with the Norwegians and Swedes on the beach, a living hell already for enough of those poor village folks. Course none of the brown skins were in the news getting rescued, the little brown boys they were buggering, just the little white boys that went missing.
Yeah, well seems the Muslims aren’t taking all the explanations any more. The whole world is getting tired of the white explanations, and NGO’s are just a new colonialism. Getting paid big bucks to help the poor, road to hell.
Ah, thank you so much for your insightful comment, a truly useful and needed contribution to the ongoing debate. I commend you for your hard hitting arguments and hope you’ll keep up the good work of arguing so eloquently for the people in Laos. With the help of you and your useful allies the tragedy in Laos will soon be ignored and forgotten. A shame really, since the people suffering in Laos and other places deserve better.
Wow, all these people defending innocent little Norwegian Church Aid. I wonder if we changed their name to “local chapter of Muslim community”? Then there would be all this righteous indignation. What a bunch of bigots, haven’t even been to the northern Lao villages to see where NCA did their nasty little gig, but NCA is clean clean clean.
Must be a fundamentalist Christianity kind of thing, maybe we should go to your town in norway, burn your crops, do a few arial photos so we burn every last one, put you on a death march, and get paid good to do it. Now that would be a worthwhile aid program.
Oh heck, we made you sit out there on the ice did we, no slippery fish either? What a shame, your kid froze to death, that is so sad, naw, couldn’t have happened.
This is the Wounded Knee of northern Laos, and it isn’t going away, anymore than the stink of pickled fish, accessory before the fact.
Must be a fundamentalist Christianity kind of thing, maybe we should go to your town in norway, burn your crops, do a few arial photos so we burn every last one, put you on a death march, and get paid good to do it. Now that would be a worthwhile aid program.
As I suspected this was yet another “bigotry” against the “west” and all their awful deeds. Well, I will leave it at that and thank you for the debate and commend your well argued case, using words like “eradication”, “genocide” and new accusations like “fundamentalist Christianity kind of thing.”
If you ever happened to visit Norway in the future I hope you’ll have a pleasant stay. Not that I would recommend you burning crops and put our population on a “Death March” as you say you would like to do, but if so, we would indeed need all the Aid we could get.
yeah, well if you think that all the disasters in Laos are created by the Lao government, guess again. Shows how arrogant the west is. The bombs left here by the American fascists were not left here by the Lao Government, they were left here by the American Fascists. More than 2,000,000 tons of bombs. Contaminating nearly the entire country.
And IMF, World Bank, the US Drug War, and a host of parasite agencies and NGO’s living the good life while they push the country around.
Oh, I thought corruption was what brown people do. Like all the big salaries and land cruisers everywhere in Vientiane driven by WHITE NGO staff.
And the convenience stores full of fancy imported food filled with exclusively white NGO staff.
Naw, NGO’s wouldn’t be doing any harm in Lao, everything is the Lao government’s fault, boy, you really expect people to buy such a sorry excuse for the facts in the villages of north Laos?
Oh, I’m sorry, maybe you haven’t been there yet?
The mining, with NO environmental regulation, done by western countries, the dams funded by banks, western banks, yeah, blame it on the communists. That will make it all go away.
Plenty of fool policies were dreamed up by the western NGO’s and pushed on the Lao government only to be condemned as the fault of the government of Lao a few years later.
Well, Norwegians should watch what they are up to in other people’s countries. This is about more than a cartoon.
Even if there were a kernel of truth to these wild accusations, never have I seen a cause argued so badly. Counter-productive with bells on.
Poor people, if they truly are in need of someone to speak for them, to be “blessed” with your “help”. It’s like needing a lawyer, and showing up in court, only to discover that it has appointed Mr Bozo Raving-Loony as your legal counsel…
Well, I do not think any debate is enriched by resorting to name-calling, more unsubstantial accusations, and obvious “short-circuiting” with regard to “responsibility” for all the wrong things in the world.
Your analysis is too simplistic, and of course very convenient to have a “scape-goat”, but again national authorities is responsible for the national policy.
Any NGO will stay in a country, as long as the authorities want them there, and no longer.
So if this accusations, or even a fracture of it, was true, why is the NGO still in Laos ?
Maybe because this accusations of responsibility for killings are not true ?
And if your agenda should be to speak for people in need, which I find a bit hard to believe after this debate, you should maybe rethink the strategy, because helping people in need is of course a commendable task.
Anyway I have said my piece in this debate, thank you for exchanging points of view.
Stomp the Eradicators!
Actually, I wasn’t concerned with your name.
Can you tell me the names of the dead children?
That is what you should be concerned with, and if you haven’t been to the villages of north Laos, to see the children die yourself, do us a favor and shut up.
Yeah, they helped people in need, according to their own need, not the need of the people who died.
That sure is commendable!
Halvor Kolshus making probably close to $30,000 a month and perks. No north shore oil for feeding mountain peoples.
White people just don’t get it.
To the Prime Minister of Norway
Mr. Jens Stoltenberg:
We are asking, that you investigate allegations that Norwegian Church Aid in Laos, along with numerous Norwegian Agency and Aid workers, (UNDP, UNDCP, UNODC) instituted a program to eradicate opium in northern Laos among the tribal people, when in fact there was NOT replacement forms of income, which led to the death of thousands of people, infants, children and the elderly, from starvation and disease which is ongoing at this time.
Norwegian Church Aid shamelessly states on its website, as a positive event, that it is helping eradicate opium production in Laos.
The mountain people of Laos should be so lucky as to eradicate the fishing industry of Norway, along with the cartoon industry.
Norwegian Church Aid is accused of opposing opium production in a country that does not belong to Norway, in a country that is not Norwegian, and in a country where the tribal people did not vote for Norway’s interference in their lives.
Norwegian Church Aid is accused of mugging the facts, promoting the fallacy that the eradication of opium only improves the lives of women, when in fact the magnitude of the crops that they must plant and care for in the abscence of opium is never mentioned, crops like corn, which require huge environmental destruction, are extremely intense forms of labor, and which damage huge areas of topsoil. As compared to a few kilos of opium removed from one or to hectres of land, corn requires hundreds if not thousands of kilos to be harvested, shucked, and transported by hand.
Norwegian Church Aid is accused of mugging the facts, when it says that all tribal women are for eradication, when in fact, the forced relocations associated with the opium eradication brought about the deaths of thousands. We do not see how women can benefit from watching their children die, as we have watched them die.
Norwegian Church Aid is accused of promoting and supporting the eradication of opium without the Free, Prior and Informed Consent of the growing communities.
Norwegian Church Aid is accused of having provided funds, salaries and logistical support to armed individuals who forced mountain peoples to cut their opium at gunpoint, while also feeding those individuals off village livestock over prolonged periods of time, with no compensation to the villagers, and while it was fully known that a blanket eradication of opium would cause severe hardship and death in those villages.
Norwegian Church Aid is accused of blatant racism and religious intolerance, promoting racist propaganda that there is an attitude of “free sex” in mountain communities, which is insulting and ethno racist treatment of the mountain peoples.
We request that the Norwegian Center for Human Rights investigate the ongoing death rates of mountain minority peoples in the region of Muang Long district as a result of these policies that Norwegian Church Aid cooperated with, that the Norwegian Halvor Koshus implemented while at UNDCP, and that were also supported by Krister Winer, while he worked as Chief Technical Advisor for Norwegian Church Aid.
There is a Biblical saying that you don’t cook a kid in its mother’s milk, and neither do you pay people to force the mountain people to cut their own opium.
It is without conscience that Norwegian Church Aid joined together with UNDCP and the US Drug War policies to support what amounts to ethnic cleansing in Laos. It is further disgusting that Norwegians defend these racist actions.
We also condemn Norwegian Church Aid for failing to make note of, or keep track of the blatantly obvious mortality rates in the villages that persists to this day, which chiefly effect infants, children and women.
We site the ACF report (Action Contre Le Faim not available in electronic format), which condemns the western proposal of these eradications, tollerance of these forced relocations, and identifies mortality rates to be as high as 20% in some villages in the first year, although we know the death toll in fact to be much higher.
We site the report Aiding and Abetting for more details on the NGO cooperation with these policies.
We site the IMF demands of the Lao government in 2001 which insisted that the Lao Government Nationalize the policy of opium eradication, despite the fact that numerous officials of the Lao Governtment anonymously oppose the eradication of opium, and stated so in previous government policies.
We site the UNODC (previously UNDCP) for refusing to allow Laos to join Tazmania and other countries in legally producing opium for the medical industry.
We condemn Norwegian Church Aid cooperation with the US Drug War policy in Laos when the US Govt. has FAILED to pick up its bombs in Laos, which were dropped in gross violation of Geneva Conventions, and continue to litter, endanger and maim the good people of Laos.
We demand an immediate review of Norwegian Church Aid involvement in Laos, and the role of other Norwegians, in the opium eradication policy.
We demand an immediate accounting of the past and current death rates in Muang Long villages, and the cause of these death rates.
Norwegian involvement in Laos is odd, when the Norwegians do not consider Laos important enough to even have an Embassy in the country.
We condemn the racist covert policies of Norwegian Church Aid, the Government of Norway, and the Norwegian Public which make these programs possible, while they are safely far removed from teh death and destruction they fund.
There is not possibly ONE SINGLE NORWEGIAN CHILD WHO MUST LIVE UNDER CONDITIONS WHICH EVEN REMOTELY RESEMBLE THE CONDITIONS IMPOSED BY THE POLICIES AND COOPERATION OF NORWEGIAN CHURCH AID IN NORTHERN LAOS ON THE MOUNTAIN PEOPLES!!!!
We demand financial compensation from the NORWEGIAN GOVERNMENT BE GIVEN TO EVERY FAMILY WHICH LOST A CHILD OR CHILDREN AS THE CASE OFTEN WAS, AS A RESULT OF THE GENOCIDAL ETHNIC CLEANSING MACHINATIONS OF THE MACHIAVELLIANS AT NCA.
We also demand that Norwegian Church Aid remove the use of photographs of Akha women from their website, in the fact that they brought about the death of so many Akha and other ethnic children.
Welcome to hell,
Eradicated Children
Yeah, well Norway wants to have its cake and eat it too.
When it comes to whaling, no one is going to tell them what to do, but when it comes to Lao Opium, man they ARE THE BOSS!
Its all a matter of racism and skin color. We’d like to see them prove otherwise, accusing people of fantasizing about mountain children dying in Laos!
What incredible white hypochrisy, killing children, killing whales, right side, left side, anything is ok, long as a NORWEGIAN profits off it.
The sooner Laos sends NCA packing the better.
The villagers of Laos should be made aware that NCA is not welcome in their communities, a powerful, oil rich country pushing them around.
And look at this off Earth Island:
“Finally, Norway claims that the most important argument in favour of whaling is the principle that states have a right to utilize their renewable natural resources on a scientific basis.” (UNLESS IT IS OPIUM)
“Nations have a right to determine their own affairs, but not in violation of international treaties that they have signed on to. If Norway is permitted to violate the commercial whaling ban and base their catch on inaccurate whale population data, there will be little to prevent Japan, Iceland, and a host of other countries from doing the same. This precedent could cause the entire IWC moratorium to crumble. It would also set a dangerous precedent globally if countries are allowed to back out of environmental treaties and agreements if they just don’t feel like honoring them anymore. “
So the Norwegians really want to do just what ever suits them!
Don’t ban whale hunting for them, but go to a foreign country where the poorest of the poor have nothing and chop down their crop!!!!
If Norwegians don’t want to smoke opium, then don’t, and if they don’t want to shoot up, then don’t, but no one ever died or killed a whale while smoking opium.
Frankly, I think that any one who sticks whale meat in their mouth aught to get at least 50 years hard labor in Siberia. And FORCED DETOX of course!
Are we seeing a pattern here?
” Norwegian aid organization blasted
Norges Vel (The Royal Norwegian Society for Development) has been accused of mismanaging aid projects in developing nations so badly that many of the poor they help end up worse than before. “
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1187844.ece
No kidding, well that shouldn’t take a rocket scientist.
and:
“afrol News, 29 June, 2002 – The Office of the Auditor General of Norway is now to launch a general study of the Norwegian aid to Mozambique after the uncovering of widespread corruption in that country. US$ 250 million had “disappeared” during the privatisation of two banks, the same amount as Norwegian aid to Mozambique. “
http://www.afrol.com/News2002/moz005_norw_aid.htm
Or this is even more fun, The Norwegian Funding of Terrorism in Sri Lanka and a few other deeds.
http://www.senter.no/references.htm
Ah, and all the protest about a country full of innocent good hearted people who wouldn’t run any kind of misconceived project, dear me!
But don’t stop there, it gets better, good ole NGO Norwegian Paedophiles! How much sex with children will $30,000 a month buy you?
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/5/6/151901.shtml
And then of course, witness statements have it that money’s NCA provided for an HIV and Trafficking awareness project in Namtha province, actually bought hookers for the staff.
How Northern Donors Promote Corruption:
http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/item.shtml?x=85822