Resorts Replace Tsunami Victims

The culture in the United States is one that promotes rapid change. While this change may lead to positive outcomes such as innovative ideas and inventions, it can also create negative ones. Take, for example, our news media. The constant demand for something new in our culture has resulted in media coverage that bounces from topic to topic in order to feed the seemingly insatiable public appetite for a different and more sensational story. As a result, our major news sources such as CNN, Fox and the New York Times have what amounts to ADD at a corporate level; what makes headlines today may not even make the paper tomorrow. Remember that cute Cuban boy? His name was Esteban, right?This "ADD" became glaringly obvious as I was reading The Guardian online (a U.K.-based newspaper) and I noticed a big headline about the tsunami relief effort in southeast Asia. I had just been on MSNBC.com and the only world news listed was about the war on terror, China's nuclear quest and the Gaza strip. Thanks, then, to England. Since the tsunami was over a year ago, you generally have to dig (deeply, I may add) through a printed news source to find an update on what's happening in regards to the relief effort. Even then, it may only be one of those "Where We Are One Year Later" bits of photojournalism. So it was monumental, then, that this tsunami article was a headline, complete with lots of text and had nothing to do with the sensationalist image of a boat on top of what used to be someone's house.

Instead, the article documented human rights violations that are occurring under the auspices of relief efforts in the affected countries. ActionAid International, along with Habitat International Coalition and PDHRE (People's Movement for Human Rights Learning), conducted a study in Thailand, Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives of over 50,000 people and concluded that "the governments frequently ignored human rights principles and failed to protect survivors from discrimination, land grabbing and violence."

The human rights principles in question include the state of housing in relief camps. A resident of the Namunaghar relief camp in India is quoted in the ActionAid report as saying, "The septic tanks are full and overflowing. Sanitation is very bad in the camp. There is no proper place to dispose of solid waste. We just have to throw it out in the open." While it is to be expected, but not condoned, that there would be problems arranging adequate housing and facilities for the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the tsunami, it is clear that the problems go far deeper.

There are numerous allegations in the ActionAid report that tsunami aid is not reaching all of those who need and deserve it. Issues of caste, class, gender and ethnicity have prevented many from receiving the aid they are entitled to. In India, members of the Dalit, or so-called "untouchable" caste, claim that they are not receiving any aid because of that association (the term "aid" includes food, medical attention, and money). In Sri Lanka, people displaced by the ongoing civil war are not receiving aid, and in an article from Reuters there were further allegations that the aid money that was being distributed was deepening resentment between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils and Muslims. In Thailand, Mokens, essentially nomadic fishermen who live on their boats, are being discriminated against as well and not receiving the aid they are entitled to.

Women are having an especially difficult time, as many of them lost male family members in the tsunami and consequently their main source of income and protection. Allegations of sexual assault and harassment are common, and due to overcrowding in the camps women are forced to share tents or other housing structures with men outside of their families (normally a cultural taboo). According to the ActionAid report, the camps are overcrowded because people are being moved from coastal areas under the "pretext of safety." In fact, ActionAid has reported, people are being forced inland from the remains of their villages because the governments want to sell the valuable coastal land to resort developers. Daeng, a tsunami survivor in Thailand who was interviewed by ActionAid, said "they held their guns and said if I didn't leave I would join those who died in the tsunami. We have lost our families and now we are having our homes stolen."

Even though the tragedies of the tsunami are no longer in the forefront of our minds or our media, the people who survived are still suffering. Although the media may not feel as though they can sell a tsunami headline any longer, it doesn't mean that we should forget the very real problems that are taking place on the other side of the globe, especially because we'd hope that if we were in the same situation, the rest of the world would not show such apathy towards us.

For more information, including a copy of the report, please visit www.actionaidusa.org, www.hic-net.org, and www.pdhre.org.