SPEAK UP

News from Bangkok

Hi Friends of Speak Up - I haven't written much here lately, but wanted to fill you in on some of the latest news from our projects here in Bangkok.

Over the past year we've done a lot to help refugees to Thailand with their casework.  During the past few months we've set up a support program to help 10 Nepali refugee families get monthly financial support.  We've just started a process that we hope will get as many of these refugees as possible resettled into the United States where many Speak Up friends and supporters in the Los Angeles area could serve as their hosts and sponsors and help them adjust to life in the USA.  This is a long and uncertain path, but I'm inspired to think that one day we'll have an international team helping refugees here in Bangkok and there in the US, serving the practical needs of my refugee friends and clients who are desperately seeking a country that wants them and a place to call home.

Over the past two months I have been persona non grata at the Immigration Detention Center where I had been regularly visiting detainees for 6 months.  The reasons are kind of political and complex, but essentially they don't want lawyers visiting refugee clients.  As I wait for Speak Up to become officially registered in Thailand (a long process of its own), which will allow me access once again, I have relied on a team of students and interns and other volunteers to visit my detained clients.  There are more than 40 people we try to work with in the IDC.  My inability to see my clients has been a bit frustrating for me, but also neat to see other people get involved, particularly Thai law students as they help pick up the slack.  One of my greatest pleasures here in Bangkok is talking with Thai law students about ways they can serve the poor and disadvantaged as advocates.  We hope that starting with advocating for refugees we will be able to open up a number of service opportunities for aspiring Thai lawyers.  Injustice will have some serious opposition once we unleash a wave of idealistic and motivated new lawyers for the poor!

We've had some interns from other countries work with us this past summer a bit.  Abi, a third-year law student in Virginia this fall, was here this summer and coordinated most of our work with detained refugees over about 6-8 weeks.  This fall we will also be joined by another US law-student-to-be, Jessica, who will work with us for a few months during her gap year between college and beginning law studies in the fall of 2011 in the US.  And Darshini, recent university graduate from Singapore, was here this summer for several weeks and will be rejoining us for several months this fall, predominantly to work with Sri Lankan refugees.  As a fluent Tamil speaker, Darshini is a big hit with the Sri Lankan Tamil refugee community as a great translator and friend to the many Tamil refugees who often feel like no one with power or education or influence really hears them in their native language.  It's been great to have these interns and friends help me out here in Thailand, and I hope that they are just the start of many students and interns from around the world blessing us with their time and talents.

I've been working at the Chulalongkorn University Faculty of Law teaching a class on US law in English for the past two months, and just last week gave my mid-term exam.  I love teaching and helping students with their English, and this class has also given me more opportunities to meet students who want to get involved in our work.  We just opened up our new office near Chula, and this will be an ideal location to have students come by for help with their English and also to get involved.  Next week I have several new students coming by to plan refugee visits with me.  I love how this is coming together, mixing my interests in teaching and law and English and justice into one coherent whole.  There really is little better than seeing people get excited about serving those in need, and I hope that this is just the start. 

On a personal note, I need to have knee surgery again, and it appears that, due to problems with my insurance paying for the procedure in Thailand, I will need to return to the US sometime in the next month for arthroscopic knee surgery once again.  This has become quite painful recently, and needs to be taken care of quickly.  Trying to figure out how it works in the schedule - timing is not ideal.

Thanks to all who support our work in practical ways.  And it's been great to have many visitors who have passed through Bangkok the last months.  Thailand is an accessible, beautiful and fun country to visit, and we welcome all visitors to come and say hi while visiting Thailand.

Troy Anderson

International Justice Center

We've finally found a space near Chulalongkorn University for our office which we are calling the International Justice Center.  It will have working space, a lounge for students and interns, and an area to meet with clients.  It's pretty humble, and right now it's still being worked on to remove the previous orange dot color scheme, but once it's open we'll have a great place to do our casework and work with law students.

Grand Opening Party coming soon - stay tuned.

Thanks to all my supporters and donors who are helping this to happen.  One day we'll have Justice Centers all over the world - this is just the start.

And thanks to the Chula law students who have helped me get this all straightened out. 

From Students to Lawyers to Advocates for the Poor?

Late Sunday night I came back from 6 days in Hong Kong with a group of law students from Chulalongkorn University competing in the Vis Moot Competition.  While coaching top-notch law students from Thailand's elite university in an international business competition might seem to some to be far removed from our vision of being advocates for the poor, my time there was a great investment in the future.  What I hope to do in Thailand - and soon in other countries as well - is train and inspire and mobilize indigenous lawyers to pursue the work of justice in their own country. 

I love teaching, and thoroughly enjoyed my time helping my Thai students grapple with legal analysis and argument in English.  It always impresses me when young students (Thai law students are undergraduates, so these students are 19 or 20 years old) can argue and debate in a second language.  And the judges agreed - though we didn't win the competition, the Chula students made a good showing for themselves and grew in confidence and poise in lawyering internationally in English.  I was proud to be their coach.

And I'm really excited to be teaching a class at Chula starting in early June.  My class on the US Criminal and Political System will help students with their English (I won't be able to lecture in Thai for at least a few more years!), give them a taste of an interactive, participatory style of teaching, and prepare Thai law students for future legal studies in the US.  It's a small way I can offer something back to the Thai legal community which, with a few exceptions, has been incredibly gracious and welcoming to me. 

But beyond teaching English, what I really hope to do in the long term is train Thai lawyers to give their lives to pursue justice for people in Thailand and Southeast Asia who need advocates.  I can only do so much in English as a foreigner here in Thailand.  But if Thai lawyers are inspired and mobilized to care for the refugees, for the landless minorities and undocumented and unrepresented ethnic groups, for the victims of trafficking and exploitation in their own country - watch out!  They can change their own country by speaking up for the poor, and that is what I will help them do. 

A tangible next step in this process is having my Thai students tour Thailand with me to find sites where we can serve the practical legal needs of the poor.  April and May are the summer break for Thai schools, so during this time I plan to take some of my students on a brief tour of some of the poor areas of Thailand to lay the foundation for our future work around the country.  I hope soon to have a number of places around Thailand where law students can provide tangible legal help for the poor.  One day, all across Thailand, refugees and minorities and all sorts of the forgotten poor will know that an unlikely group of idealistic Thai law students - normally associated with Thai high-society but now with a vision to speak up for the poor - will be a voice for them in the system.  It's part of my dream for the beautiful country of Thailand that has so many political and social divisions but could be a model for peace and justice. 

With the right training and support, young Thai lawyers will transform the justice system in their country and region. I've sensed skepticism in some people who think this is all a pipe dream, that there is no way that my young students will change the world.  But they used to say that about all sorts of people who later turned the world on its head.  And I am confident that if we persist in serving and training students, if we let them into our lives and share our vision of humbly serving the poor with them, they will taste the life that is found in sacrificially giving to the disadvantaged and will be begging to join our movement.

I want to be an excellent part-time law professor.  But more than that, I want to be a mentor to young law students and give them the tools to move from students to lawyers to true advocates.  My start is with a handful of law students who kindly put up with my lame Thai skills and like to talk to me about America, Thailand, and why I came to Bangkok to hang out with refugees and prostitutes and penniless minorities.  I tell them that's what advocates do - go where the need is - and I believe that in some form or another, some of them will join me as advocates for the poor one day.