Friday, December 31, 2004
today's papersAgony in AcehBy Eric UmanskyPosted Friday, Dec. 31, 2004, at 12:42 AM PT
Everybody focuses on Indonesia's Aceh province, where the government now says at least 80,000 are dead—bringing the worldwide total to about 120,000—and there is still no access to, or solid information from, hundreds of miles of Aceh's worst-hit areas.
The New York Times says in even Aceh's capital—where aid is supposedly flowing in—"relief of any kind was still badly lacking." One problem is that there's so much debris and destruction it's near almost impossible to drive any distance. Rescuers have only been able to make it by helicopter to Aceh's west coast. Hundreds of thousands lived there, but officials flying over have seen few signs of life. The Wall Street Journal talks to one local official who said only four of 28 villages in his district escaped total destruction.
The papers rely largely on two sources of information from the still-isolated coast. One is a British conservationist who did a flyover and described it as looking like "old photos you see of Hiroshima." The other one is the first of a handful of survivors rescued from the region's main town, Meulaboh, which used to have a population of tens of thousands. "The place where I lived has been turned into the ocean," she said. "There are survivors, but many of them are wounded."
Everybody also notes increasing frustration with the Indonesian government's response. Citing an "American official," the NYT notes, "Indonesia's helicopter fleet, which could be used to make more food drops to the region, appeared to be grounded with technical problems."
The papers all mention the White House's announcement that Secretary of State Powell and the president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, will visit some of the disaster areas this weekend.
The NYT has a solid tick-tock on the tsunamis, following scientists as they realized what was happening but didn't know who to warn.
According to early morning reports, a fire in a Buenos Aires club killed 150 people and injured about 400.
In Iraq, one GI died from wounds he received during Wednesday's large-scale insurgent attack in Mosul. Yesterday, the city's 700 electoral workers reportedly resigned, citing threats. And three guerrilla groups warned Iraqis against voting.
The NYT mentions inside that, as expected, Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf announced he's reneging on his promise to relinquish his job as the head of the army. "The voice of the majority" wants that, he said. The paper doesn't mention the White House's response. But the Washington Post's editorial page takes a guess: "ANOTHER PASS FOR PAKISTAN."
The WSJ goes Page One with the administration issuing a new directive retreating from its previously permissive view of torture. The White House had said it would issue the memo months ago. The WSJ mentions, but doesn't emphasize, that the order doesn't actually repudiate some of the harsher treatment the Pentagon has used. One former Justice Dept. official, who helped write the original torture memos, said this revision "removed all the clear lines but didn't change the basic analysis."
The Los Angeles Times digs through federal disclosure forms and finds that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted a lot more gifts over the past six years than have his colleagues, a total of $42,000 worth. Ethics codes only bar justices from accepting goodies from people who have business in front of the court. For what it's worth, the Times notices that some the most expensive swag came from a Texan conservative who had been a board member of a group that often filed amicus briefs in the Court.
The Post fronts House Republican leaders pushing to loosen another ethics committee rule in order to make it harder to discipline wayward lawmakers.
Dept of Irony in Naming ... A finger-wagging "analysis" accompanying the above WP piece notes: "The Office of Government Ethics has proposed, and Bush supports, legislation to ease financial disclosure requirements for government officials, reducing the amount of conflict-of-interest information that candidates and their families must report. The House recently passed a version of the legislation."
And finally: Happy New Year.Eric Umansky writes "Today's Papers" for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@hotmail.com.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2111633/
Everybody focuses on Indonesia's Aceh province, where the government now says at least 80,000 are dead—bringing the worldwide total to about 120,000—and there is still no access to, or solid information from, hundreds of miles of Aceh's worst-hit areas.
The New York Times says in even Aceh's capital—where aid is supposedly flowing in—"relief of any kind was still badly lacking." One problem is that there's so much debris and destruction it's near almost impossible to drive any distance. Rescuers have only been able to make it by helicopter to Aceh's west coast. Hundreds of thousands lived there, but officials flying over have seen few signs of life. The Wall Street Journal talks to one local official who said only four of 28 villages in his district escaped total destruction.
The papers rely largely on two sources of information from the still-isolated coast. One is a British conservationist who did a flyover and described it as looking like "old photos you see of Hiroshima." The other one is the first of a handful of survivors rescued from the region's main town, Meulaboh, which used to have a population of tens of thousands. "The place where I lived has been turned into the ocean," she said. "There are survivors, but many of them are wounded."
Everybody also notes increasing frustration with the Indonesian government's response. Citing an "American official," the NYT notes, "Indonesia's helicopter fleet, which could be used to make more food drops to the region, appeared to be grounded with technical problems."
The papers all mention the White House's announcement that Secretary of State Powell and the president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, will visit some of the disaster areas this weekend.
The NYT has a solid tick-tock on the tsunamis, following scientists as they realized what was happening but didn't know who to warn.
According to early morning reports, a fire in a Buenos Aires club killed 150 people and injured about 400.
In Iraq, one GI died from wounds he received during Wednesday's large-scale insurgent attack in Mosul. Yesterday, the city's 700 electoral workers reportedly resigned, citing threats. And three guerrilla groups warned Iraqis against voting.
The NYT mentions inside that, as expected, Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf announced he's reneging on his promise to relinquish his job as the head of the army. "The voice of the majority" wants that, he said. The paper doesn't mention the White House's response. But the Washington Post's editorial page takes a guess: "ANOTHER PASS FOR PAKISTAN."
The WSJ goes Page One with the administration issuing a new directive retreating from its previously permissive view of torture. The White House had said it would issue the memo months ago. The WSJ mentions, but doesn't emphasize, that the order doesn't actually repudiate some of the harsher treatment the Pentagon has used. One former Justice Dept. official, who helped write the original torture memos, said this revision "removed all the clear lines but didn't change the basic analysis."
The Los Angeles Times digs through federal disclosure forms and finds that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted a lot more gifts over the past six years than have his colleagues, a total of $42,000 worth. Ethics codes only bar justices from accepting goodies from people who have business in front of the court. For what it's worth, the Times notices that some the most expensive swag came from a Texan conservative who had been a board member of a group that often filed amicus briefs in the Court.
The Post fronts House Republican leaders pushing to loosen another ethics committee rule in order to make it harder to discipline wayward lawmakers.
Dept of Irony in Naming ... A finger-wagging "analysis" accompanying the above WP piece notes: "The Office of Government Ethics has proposed, and Bush supports, legislation to ease financial disclosure requirements for government officials, reducing the amount of conflict-of-interest information that candidates and their families must report. The House recently passed a version of the legislation."
And finally: Happy New Year.Eric Umansky writes "Today's Papers" for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@hotmail.com.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2111633/
December 31, 2004AID
Many Still in Need as Aid Is Trickling to Stricken AreaBy JANE PERLEZ
JAKARTA, Indonesia, Friday, Dec. 31 - Food drops and other aid trickled toward this region from around the world on Friday, but slowly enough that the injured and the stranded in many places still had to fend for themselves as the toll from "an unprecedented global catastrophe" surged past 120,000.
The human tally in Indonesia jumped after officials said that nearly 28,000 more bodies had been uncovered in Aceh Province, on the island of Sumatra, near the epicenter of Sunday's enormous undersea earthquake. The discovery brought the death count close to 80,000 in this country alone.
At least three times the number of dead may be seriously injured, their survival dependent on the arrival of urgent medical aid, international health experts said.
At the United Nations, Secretary General Kofi Annan told a news conference on Thursday that a World Bank pledge of $250 million had raised the total amount devoted to the emergency to nearly $500 million. He said that more than 30 countries and millions of individuals had joined in the global campaign.
"I am satisfied with the response so far," he said, but added, "the only thing I want to stress is that we are in this for the long term and we need to help people rebuild their lives."
On Thursday, Mr. Annan met with the heads of major United Nations agencies, the ambassadors of 12 affected countries and representatives of the European Union.
He then took part by video link in a meeting in Washington that included Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, the president of the World Bank, James D. Wolfensohn, and the representatives of three other nations - Australia, India and Japan - that have formed a "core group" along with the United States to lead in coordinating the relief drive.
The White House announced that Mr. Powell would tour the region to assess its needs next week along with the president's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida. (Related Article)
Mr. Annan said he welcomed the group's initiative because the regional powers could immediately bring essential resources to the task and "support the United Nations effort."
Speaking of the challenge ahead, Mr. Annan said, "It is so huge that no one agency or one country can deal with it alone and that we need to coordinate our efforts and pool our efforts to have maximum impact on the crisis."
"This is an unprecedented global catastrophe," he added, "and it requires an unprecedented global response."
The extent of the red tape was demonstrated when the United Nations Children's Fund said that enough aid to help 200,000 people, including medical supplies, soap and tarpaulins, had landed Thursday at the Jakarta airport, far from the disaster scene. But the aid had to wait a day for customs clearance before it could be moved north, Unicef said.
As the relief effort struggled to lift off, the death toll continued to rise along with fears of looting and disease. Sri Lanka reported more than 27,000 dead, India more than 10,000. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand said he feared the toll there could reach 7,000.
People throughout the region remained jittery. On Thursday morning, the Indian government issued a warning of another tsunami along the southern coast, halting the recovery of bodies and sending people in India and Sri Lanka fleeing from the beaches in panic.
The warning, set off by a small aftershock, appeared to be a false alarm, but indicated the sensitivity of Indian officials to criticism that they should have alerted the coastal villages hit on Sunday, in many cases, two or three hours after the quake that caused the tsunami.
Nowhere do people appear as traumatized as in Aceh, which contains nearly all Indonesia's dead, making that province by far the hardest hit of any place in a disaster felt as far away as Africa.
The Indonesian government said that it had begun dropping packets of instant noodles and medicine from the air to survivors still stranded near cliffs on Aceh's western coast, but large areas remained inaccessible and as many as 20,000 more people are believed to be dead there.
Even in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, relief of any kind was still badly lacking and frustration was growing among volunteers and survivors who, until the arrival of more coordinated international aid, had to make do for themselves.
"For four days now we haven't gotten any help," said Dasrizal Nyakna, 38, a leader of a group of some 35 volunteers who crammed into a truck and drove more than 24 hours up the coast to lend a hand, lugging boxes packed with clothing and food.
"People are still suffering," he said. "They're still waiting, and we need more help, much more help." He lost his wife and two children on Sunday when the tsunami hit.
The first American military C-130 aircraft arrived in Medan on Thursday evening with three pallets of food and supplies and 15 marines who will assess how the far larger quantities of aid coming on American naval shops can be distributed. More C-130's are expected to shuttle to Medan from the air base at U Tapao, Thailand, on Friday.
The American consul in Medan, Paul Berg, said there were already huge bottlenecks, with aid being stuck at the airports at Banda Aceh and Medan. In Banda Aceh there were few trucks to take the supplies out of the airport, and the United States Agency for International Development was trying to organize a fleet of trucks for the 12-hour journey between the cities.
The aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, accompanied by six ships, is steaming toward the waters off Aceh but is still some days away, an American officials said on Friday. Its main mission will be to get military helicopters and their American pilots within range of the coast so they can start dropping food and water.
Three other Navy vessels carrying more than 2,000 marines en route to Iraq from San Diego may be diverted as well, the military official said. The marines were needed in Iraq for the January elections, and whether they would be sent toward Indonesia was a "political" decision yet to be made, the official said Thursday.
The ships, he said, are carrying about a dozen heavy lift helicopters and full surgical hospitals - equipment badly needed in Aceh, where doctors, nurses and medicines are almost nonexistent.
"These amphibious ships bring significant help for the relief effort if the decision is made to deploy them," the official said.
The Australian government said it had sent four C-130 Hercules transport aircraft and a Boeing 707 carrying medical supplies, generators, shelter and water purification to Aceh. A ship with helicopters was to leave Australia on Friday but would not arrive in Aceh until Jan. 13, the government said.
All around Aceh and elsewhere bodies remained uncollected as survivors turned to their own needs.
The threat of cholera and typhoid, and the stench of decay, had become so severe that people in Banda Aceh had begun burning bloated bodies exposed for days to the tropical sun, which is normally forbidden by Islam except in case of emergency.
At Meulaboh, a town of about 120,000 on the western coast of Aceh, about a third of the population was estimated to have perished in the succession of waves that swamped the town on Sunday, Indonesian officials said.
An Indonesian officer, Captain Bachtiar, who is a member of the military command at Meulaboh, told Agence France-Presse that seven successive waves from the tsunami hit the town, about 90 miles from the epicenter of the quake.
He described how he had been pinned under a rock and had given up hope of living. "I had already accepted my fate," he said. "My entire body was aching and I felt there was no longer any hope. But suddenly my leg managed to loosen itself." A wave then threw him safely onto a treetop.
A British conservationist, Mike Griffiths, who flew over Meulaboh on Wednesday said he could see thirsty and hungry survivors walking around dazed. "The picture that comes to me is of old photos you see of Hiroshima," he said. "There is nothing, just a few odd buildings."
An Indonesian military ship sent to the town to deliver supplies on Wednesday could not dock, and had to leave, according to an Indonesian report.
The president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who visited Banda Aceh briefly the day after the earthquake, will return Saturday, his aides said. He plans to make a special effort to fly to Meulaboh to emphasize the needs there, they said.
But as criticism of the government's efforts mounted, the trade minister, Mari Pangestu, was forced to acknowledged the slow pace of relief, which had left people in Aceh begging for food and drinking water.
She said the government had a "system" but that a lack of transportation and fuel had kept assistance parked at the airports in Medan and Banda Aceh on Sumatra from being delivered.
Beyond those killed in the tsunami, hundreds of thousands of people have sustained serious injuries that need urgent medical care, Dr. Lee Jong Wook, the director general of the World Health Organization, said.
Other officials estimated that the number of seriously injured could be about three or four times those killed. But Dr. Pino Annunziata, a physician working in W.H.O.'s emergency response team, said, "Surely that is an underestimate."
Warren Hoge, at the United Nations, Eric Lichtblau, in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and Lawrence K. Altman, in New York, contributed reporting for this article.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS Help Back to Top
