peterpan wrote on 10
th Feb, 2014 at 12:03pm:
My idea: before program, peaful and starving, after, starving and surviving. Now, living and chaotic. You go there to have a look. But, dong blame their laziness for their poverty. In my eyes, laziness is kind of living attitude. I dont prefer business with nothing done. I prefer laziness with something done.
Buk Nut wrote on 10
th Feb, 2014 at 11:57am:
So can you tell me something? Were the hilltribes doing well before the opium eradication program? What kind of effects did the opium eradication program have on the hilltribes and how did it change their lifestyle?
The hilltribes survived for hundreds of years alone without the interference of national governments, so I don't think they were starving.
They only started getting malaria, starving and dying after they were forced down from the mountains. In the past they had practiced slash and burn agriculture which was probably bad for the environment though, so the government saw them as a pest.
Anyways, if they move down into society it will be just like Thailand where one's parents are hill people and the children only learn to speak the language of the schools and then forget about their parents and then just disappear into regular society. Moving them down is only gonna kill them off slowly, you could call it cultural genocide.