By Rafael D. Frankel
LAEM PHRAO,Thailand—A patch of land that used to be jungle at the northern tip of Phuket island will be an morge housing thousands of bodies by Friday.
Bulldozers cleared brush and semi-trucks brought in cargo holds normally found on ocean freight vessles here, and at two other provinces along Thailand’s Southwest coast, in a race against time to prevent an epidemic just as dangerous to public health as the tsunami which struck here the day after Christmas.
With thousands of bodies unbagged, unbarried, and rapidly decomposing in the tropical heat, Thai authorities were working around the clock Thursday to finish construction of the make-shift mourges before infectious diseases like diheria and cholera could spread into the general population.
By the late afternoon, engineers were installing electricity to provide air conditioning for the 50 cargo, capable of holding 2,500 bodies in total, which were on their way from Bangkok and the southern port city Songklah.
So far, no wide spread infections have been reported here, Interior Minister Bhokin told foreign diplomats today during a briefing detailing the steps Thailand is taking to avoid any outbreaks, British Ambassador David Full said. The three stage process, Bhokin said, had already moved from the first stage of rescue and recovery, to the prevention of infection stage. The final task would be rehabilitation and reconstruction.
The minister expressed confidence that Thailand had control over the situation despite the reports of infections breaking out in at least one hospital in Phang Nga province, the worst stricken area of Thailand.
The infections “are what happens in disasters like this when hospitals are under such great pressure,” Ambassador Full said. “I think they’re doing a teriffic job.”
“The resources are there. They’re being innovative and sensitive to cultural concerns and they are being transparent about the whole thing,” he said.
As a Budhist country where the dead are cremated, Thailand is facing a particularly difficult dilema in dealing with so many foreign casulties. Cremating the bodies would be a far easier and faster way of staving off any epidemics.
But mindful of all the international attention focused on them right now, and as a society with a history of genuine respectf for foreign customs, they do not want to offend families from dozens of countries who lost loved one shere.
“This has never happened before so we are learning as we go,” said Pasan Teparak, the deputy chief of protocol for the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affaris. “We welcome any ideas and will listen to input from everyone.”
The mourges will be kept open until families of the dead from Thailand and around the world. arrive to identify the bodies and bring them home, or until embassy officials repatriate the remains.
Thailand is bracing for a deluge of foreigners from around the world who will come looking for missing relatives in addition to the survivors who are already searching the hospitals and temples here—there are still hundreds of bodies being storied at three Budhist sanctuaries.
Each day, hundreds more fliers displaying pictures of the missing and contact numbers are posted around Phuket.
While the dissemination of information regarding the dead and injured was halting and often times incoherant in the days since the waves struck, hospitals and mourges began to patch their data together on Wednesday.
On Thursday, though still incomplete and studded with unknown details, long casualty reports were available at the disaster relief center set up at Phuket Town Hall. Locals and foreigners alike perused the lists, sometimes finding a relative in hospital, but more often finding them listed as “dead.”
Suchart Seedee, 47, from Krabi province where hundreds were killed, found his daughter, Sutichai, listed as dead. “They found her burried underneath the Patong Merlin Hotel,” he said, as tears streamed down his face. His outward emotion was rare for a Thai man who, aside from laughing, are reserved almost as a rule.
“I came all this way and she’s dead, and I have nowhere to go,” he said.
There was at least one happy reunion Thursday. Frenchman Jacques Hanninot found his brother, Pierre, completely unharmed on his sailboat which he had just docked at the Similain Islands, 100 miles west of the Phang Nga coast in the Andaman Sea.
Until Jacques dropped a paper note from a private airplane he hired to look for his brother, Pierre had not even heard of the tsunami and resulting disaster.
“I thought that he was done. When I found him, the feeling was,” he said pausing and shaking his head, “like you can imagine.”
Forensics from Australia, Italy, France, Holland, Australia, and New Zealand, arrived in Phuket today, as did three helicopters and two destroyers from the Japanese navy sent for search and rescue operations. Foreign volunteers, some who flew in from overseas, continued to pour in as well, augmenting the already huge Thai volunteer contingent.
With the recent arrivals, Thailand had all the foreign aid it required, and could probably handle, in terms of manpower, Teparak said.
Donations of medical supplies, mostly broad spectrum anti-biotics, would be the most useful, he said. Body bags, coffins, and the refrigeration units were also needed, though Thailand had already received commitments from a number of countries and the United Nations to cover most of those requirements.
Rh-negative blood types, less common in Asia than in Europe, were also in somewhat short supply, according to health officials in Bangkok where the majority of the seriously injured were transferred to. Blood drives among the foreign community were underway there, a Bangkok doctor said.
© 2004 Rafael D. Frankel and The Chicago Tribune
Friday, December 31, 2004
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Survivors await word on relatives
By Rafael D. Frankel
PHUKET, Thailand—In scenes eerily reminiscent of New York after the Sep. 11th attacks, survivors from the tidal waves which struck here the day after Christmas posted pictures of loved ones along with their contact information in hospitals and shelters all over town, and at the disaster relief center here.
At Phuket Town Hall, site of the relief center, Luke Simon, 30, of England, posted pictures of his brother, Peirs, 33. The two were separated when the waves struck and devastated Koh Phi Phi.
Luke was hopeful that his brother was still alive after he found a very similar name attached to the description of a man closely resembling his brother who had checked out of a hospital two days ago in neighboring Krabi province.
“I don’t know what state he’s in,” Simon said. “He could be shocked, or could have relapsed. I don’t think the name is a coincidence but I’m surprised because he’s a very conscientious guy and I haven’t heard from him at all.”
As the death toll climbed above 1,600 in Thailand, with over 8,000 injured, efforts turned to attempting to reunite separated families and identifying the thousands of rapidly decomposing bodies across the region. But officials cautioned that for most of the survivors who are searching for those they were with when the waves hit, the news will not be good.
Nevertheless, survivors with missing family and no tangible leads to follow in tracking them down were relying on faith and good will to guide them through the difficult days.
Liz Dinesen Johansson, 43, from Sweden, was playing on Khao Lak beach, the worst hit area of Thailand, with her husband, son, and daughter when the first wave hit. Though she was rescued from the rising waters by a local man who pulled her onto a bungalow roof, she has not seen or heard from any of her family since.
“We just wait and see, wait and see—and hope,” she said, as friend from home Lena Fallgren, who’s daughter is missing, put a comforting arm around her.
Sweden, a country of just 9 million, appears to have been dealt a particularly cruel hand among Western nations in this Asian tragedy. The have filled hospitals in Phuket and Khao Lak over the last few days with possibly over 1,000 injured and still 1,500 missing, consular officials said. Though the death toll is likely to be high, no estimate has yet been given.
“There are not too many success stories here,” said Katie Day, an American and the librarian at the Dulwich College boarding school here which is providing free housing for survivors.
Swedes, Johansson among them, make up a large percentage of foreigners staying in local shelters here who have lost all their possessions. Though their government had told them to go home, many had family members missing or already known to be dead, and were not prepared to leave without ascertaining their fate, or at least bringing their bodies back to Sweden with them.
“Several parents have missing children and several children have missing parents,” Swedish Church volunteer Jill Friberg, who came here from her home in Singapore, said.
German officials were also reporting a high number of their nationals missing. A consular officer in Phuket put the number between 1,000 and 1,500
Hospitals around Phuket were still overflowing with injured Wednesday. As some patients were being discharged, others in serious condition were being transferred from Khao Lak hospitals to better facilities.
At Bangkok International Hospital in Phuket, the intensive care unit was at double capacity as 350 foreigners made up 70 percent of the hospitals in-patients, Piyanooch Ananpakdee, the hospital’s senior marketing manager said.
So far over 2,000 foreigners had been treated at BIH since Dec. 26 at a cost of over $25,000 to the hospital. “We can’t ask people for money when they don’t even have any clothes,” Ananpakdee said.
On one of the walls at BIH where people were posting pictures of missing loved ones, a photo and description of Ben Ables of Evanston hung next to two dozen others.
The relief effort here was given a boost yesterday with the arrival of specially trained search and rescue teams from Taiwan and Germany. Anti-biotics and body bags were being sent from Israel while C-105 reconnaissance air craft would likely come from the United States, Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai said.
Another boon to the relief efforts has been a surge in the already high numbers of volunteers from around the world. Already, Thais and foreigners who lived in Phuket and Khao Lak were turning out in mass numbers to assist the government and army in their relief efforts, and today a group of over a dozen back packers who had been at a full moon party on Koh Phangang—an island in the Gulf of Thailand that was not affected by the tsunami—arrived ready to “do whatever they need us to do,” said Maryland native Alysa Spery, 20, who had been studying for three months in Vietnam.
Meanwhile foreign officials from their respective countries heaped praise on Thailand for its efforts in the aftermath of the unprecedented destruction.
“So far they have coped amicably. The forensics work on the deceased has been meticulous,” British Embassy Assistant Defense Attaché Richard Griffin said. “In very difficult circumstances they have performed very professionally.”
To a person, foreign survivors heaped praise on the Thai people in general for the generosity and warmth they were shown in what Swede Lena Fallgren called “dark times.”
“Wherever we go they always smile and ask how we are. They look in our eyes. It makes the heart warm to feel that,” she said.
© 2004 Rafael D. Frankel and The Chicago Tribune
PHUKET, Thailand—In scenes eerily reminiscent of New York after the Sep. 11th attacks, survivors from the tidal waves which struck here the day after Christmas posted pictures of loved ones along with their contact information in hospitals and shelters all over town, and at the disaster relief center here.
At Phuket Town Hall, site of the relief center, Luke Simon, 30, of England, posted pictures of his brother, Peirs, 33. The two were separated when the waves struck and devastated Koh Phi Phi.
Luke was hopeful that his brother was still alive after he found a very similar name attached to the description of a man closely resembling his brother who had checked out of a hospital two days ago in neighboring Krabi province.
“I don’t know what state he’s in,” Simon said. “He could be shocked, or could have relapsed. I don’t think the name is a coincidence but I’m surprised because he’s a very conscientious guy and I haven’t heard from him at all.”
As the death toll climbed above 1,600 in Thailand, with over 8,000 injured, efforts turned to attempting to reunite separated families and identifying the thousands of rapidly decomposing bodies across the region. But officials cautioned that for most of the survivors who are searching for those they were with when the waves hit, the news will not be good.
Nevertheless, survivors with missing family and no tangible leads to follow in tracking them down were relying on faith and good will to guide them through the difficult days.
Liz Dinesen Johansson, 43, from Sweden, was playing on Khao Lak beach, the worst hit area of Thailand, with her husband, son, and daughter when the first wave hit. Though she was rescued from the rising waters by a local man who pulled her onto a bungalow roof, she has not seen or heard from any of her family since.
“We just wait and see, wait and see—and hope,” she said, as friend from home Lena Fallgren, who’s daughter is missing, put a comforting arm around her.
Sweden, a country of just 9 million, appears to have been dealt a particularly cruel hand among Western nations in this Asian tragedy. The have filled hospitals in Phuket and Khao Lak over the last few days with possibly over 1,000 injured and still 1,500 missing, consular officials said. Though the death toll is likely to be high, no estimate has yet been given.
“There are not too many success stories here,” said Katie Day, an American and the librarian at the Dulwich College boarding school here which is providing free housing for survivors.
Swedes, Johansson among them, make up a large percentage of foreigners staying in local shelters here who have lost all their possessions. Though their government had told them to go home, many had family members missing or already known to be dead, and were not prepared to leave without ascertaining their fate, or at least bringing their bodies back to Sweden with them.
“Several parents have missing children and several children have missing parents,” Swedish Church volunteer Jill Friberg, who came here from her home in Singapore, said.
German officials were also reporting a high number of their nationals missing. A consular officer in Phuket put the number between 1,000 and 1,500
Hospitals around Phuket were still overflowing with injured Wednesday. As some patients were being discharged, others in serious condition were being transferred from Khao Lak hospitals to better facilities.
At Bangkok International Hospital in Phuket, the intensive care unit was at double capacity as 350 foreigners made up 70 percent of the hospitals in-patients, Piyanooch Ananpakdee, the hospital’s senior marketing manager said.
So far over 2,000 foreigners had been treated at BIH since Dec. 26 at a cost of over $25,000 to the hospital. “We can’t ask people for money when they don’t even have any clothes,” Ananpakdee said.
On one of the walls at BIH where people were posting pictures of missing loved ones, a photo and description of Ben Ables of Evanston hung next to two dozen others.
The relief effort here was given a boost yesterday with the arrival of specially trained search and rescue teams from Taiwan and Germany. Anti-biotics and body bags were being sent from Israel while C-105 reconnaissance air craft would likely come from the United States, Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai said.
Another boon to the relief efforts has been a surge in the already high numbers of volunteers from around the world. Already, Thais and foreigners who lived in Phuket and Khao Lak were turning out in mass numbers to assist the government and army in their relief efforts, and today a group of over a dozen back packers who had been at a full moon party on Koh Phangang—an island in the Gulf of Thailand that was not affected by the tsunami—arrived ready to “do whatever they need us to do,” said Maryland native Alysa Spery, 20, who had been studying for three months in Vietnam.
Meanwhile foreign officials from their respective countries heaped praise on Thailand for its efforts in the aftermath of the unprecedented destruction.
“So far they have coped amicably. The forensics work on the deceased has been meticulous,” British Embassy Assistant Defense Attaché Richard Griffin said. “In very difficult circumstances they have performed very professionally.”
To a person, foreign survivors heaped praise on the Thai people in general for the generosity and warmth they were shown in what Swede Lena Fallgren called “dark times.”
“Wherever we go they always smile and ask how we are. They look in our eyes. It makes the heart warm to feel that,” she said.
© 2004 Rafael D. Frankel and The Chicago Tribune
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Year-old resort gone in 'minutes'
By Rafael D. Frankel
BAN LA-ON, Thailand, Dec. 29—The sushi bar was collapsed, decorative stone elephants were sunk at the bottom of a world-record size pool, the bottom two floors of rooms were overflowing with shattered glass and assorted debris, the spa was ripped from its foundations, and the beach-side restaurant had simply disappeared into the sea.
But the priority yesterday for disaster workers and surviving staff of the five-star Sofitel Magic Lagoon Resort and Spa on Khao Lak beach was the grim task of finding, bagging, and removing the rotting corpses which were buried beneath rubble and palm fronds, trapped inside bedrooms they never made it out of, or flayed and rotting in the driveway leading up to the colonnaded lobby.
On the second day after massive tidal waves struck Thailand’s Southwestern coast, the true scale of the disaster was beginning to emerge. Similar gruesome scenes were being played out all over Khao Lak beach, a wide stretch of white sand which was formerly home to dozens of secluded, upscale resorts and which is now a ten-kilometer-long disaster area.
At least two Buddhist temples in the towns lining the beach were turned into temporary mortuaries, where the bodies of Thais and foreigners alike were awaiting identification by their families.
It was in Phang Nga province, where Khao Lak is located, that more than half of the now 1,516 reported deaths and 8,432 injuries in Thailand occurred, according to figures provided by the foreign affairs ministry. Khao Lak alone has seen around 300 bodies wash ashore in the last two days, according to the Thai national guard.
At the Sofitel, surviving staff picked through the wreckage of the once posh resort while tearful mothers and sisters of missing Thai staff brought blown-up pictures of their relatives to the washed out grounds, trying to gain any knowledge of their fate.
On what was the tennis and volley ball courts next to the front lobby, a Thai policeman showed foreigners who walked by passports belonging to the dead hotel guests. One passport belonged to a 10-year-old French girl wrapped in a bloodied sheet laying next to his truck with 12 other bodies.
In front of a golf cart which had become lodged in a fountain in the driveway, the architect of the one-year-old resort sat chain smoking cigarettes with some of the staff. “We worked eight months on this, two shifts per day, 3,000 workers, spending [$75,000 to $100,000] per day and it is all gone in five minutes,” Ekasak Thongthasawes said.
“We are totally lost. We lost staff we had worked with for so long. I believe this is worse than 9/11,” he said.
Touring the Sofitel site, Phang Nga Provincial Governor Anuwut Medhiwiboonwut said authorities had not found any survivors among the thousands still missing today, and only a few yesterday. “It’s very sad. So many people dead, and now what will the people here do for income?” he said.
While 300 people are believed to have been killed at the Sofitel alone, the visual devastation was tame in comparison to the main stretch of Khao Lak beach. There, the tidal waves completely destroyed entire structures, either leaving them collapsed on the beach or dragging their remains out to see.
Scores of bodies, parched and bloated from floating in the sea for more than 48 hours, were washing up onto shore throughout the day. The smell from the rotting flesh wafted in the air for hundreds of meters across the beach and up into the surrounding hills despite a breeze off the Andaman Sea.
Thai National Guard Captain Yirasap Sangee, who lead a detail yesterday on the beach, said most of the corpses they recovered were foreigners. Standing next to the ocean on a cloudless afternoon in front of the decimated Kaho Lak Beach Resort, he said they had been working non-stop for the last two days but that he thought the worst of it had passed.
That has yet to be seen, however, as the number of those missing is still in the thousands. Sweden alone may be missing as many as 1,500 people, according to Thorleif Hawi, who lives in Phuket and was volunteering at a station set up by the Swedish consulate at the make-shift disaster center in the Phuket Town Hall.
Despite the high foreign death toll, Thai officials said the majority of those killed here were locals.
At Watt Lak Kan, a local Buddhist temple, 42 bodies lay wrapped in sheets, some with limbs protruding, in the morning sun. By evening, that number had neared 100 as Buddhist religious workers brought more in throughout the day from the adjacent beach.
Coffins were stacked along side the corpses, but were used only when family members successfully identified a dead relative. One Japanese family took their son away at the same time as a dead Swedish woman was laid next to the rest of the corpses at the temple.
“It is not true that [the bodies] will be cremated,” Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai said yesterday, seeking to allay rumors that had spread here among foreign tourists. “The difficulty now is to identify the nationality of those who died, to identify whether they are Thais or foreigners, or if they are foreigners which country they are from.”
While some foreigners came to the temple to search for loved ones, hundreds of Thais pulled the sheets from the faces of the bodies looking for family members. Many of the locals sat under the shade of papaya trees waiting for more bodies to be delivered.
“Everyone here is sad and worried,” said Wichai, a tour guide from Phuket who only gave his first name. “They came from all over the country looking for their family and they haven’t found them.”
On Highway 4, which runs along the sea in Phang Nga, the tidal waves wrecked devastation as far as a kilometer inland. The ground floors of many buildings along the road were completely gutted while the second and third floors remained spotless.
A Thai Navy frigate was marooned in the jungle about 700 meters in from the sea while a bus which overturned killing 30 people remained mired in a four-meter deep lagoon. Rows of bodies lined the roads every few kilometers.
The first international aid arrived in Thailand yesterday, including rescue workers from Taiwan, and firefighters and paramedics from Germany. The United States would be sending C-105 reconnaissance planes with special technology to locate people stranded at sea, Foreign Minister Surakiart said.
© 2004 Rafael D. Frankel and The Chicago Tribune
BAN LA-ON, Thailand, Dec. 29—The sushi bar was collapsed, decorative stone elephants were sunk at the bottom of a world-record size pool, the bottom two floors of rooms were overflowing with shattered glass and assorted debris, the spa was ripped from its foundations, and the beach-side restaurant had simply disappeared into the sea.
But the priority yesterday for disaster workers and surviving staff of the five-star Sofitel Magic Lagoon Resort and Spa on Khao Lak beach was the grim task of finding, bagging, and removing the rotting corpses which were buried beneath rubble and palm fronds, trapped inside bedrooms they never made it out of, or flayed and rotting in the driveway leading up to the colonnaded lobby.
On the second day after massive tidal waves struck Thailand’s Southwestern coast, the true scale of the disaster was beginning to emerge. Similar gruesome scenes were being played out all over Khao Lak beach, a wide stretch of white sand which was formerly home to dozens of secluded, upscale resorts and which is now a ten-kilometer-long disaster area.
At least two Buddhist temples in the towns lining the beach were turned into temporary mortuaries, where the bodies of Thais and foreigners alike were awaiting identification by their families.
It was in Phang Nga province, where Khao Lak is located, that more than half of the now 1,516 reported deaths and 8,432 injuries in Thailand occurred, according to figures provided by the foreign affairs ministry. Khao Lak alone has seen around 300 bodies wash ashore in the last two days, according to the Thai national guard.
At the Sofitel, surviving staff picked through the wreckage of the once posh resort while tearful mothers and sisters of missing Thai staff brought blown-up pictures of their relatives to the washed out grounds, trying to gain any knowledge of their fate.
On what was the tennis and volley ball courts next to the front lobby, a Thai policeman showed foreigners who walked by passports belonging to the dead hotel guests. One passport belonged to a 10-year-old French girl wrapped in a bloodied sheet laying next to his truck with 12 other bodies.
In front of a golf cart which had become lodged in a fountain in the driveway, the architect of the one-year-old resort sat chain smoking cigarettes with some of the staff. “We worked eight months on this, two shifts per day, 3,000 workers, spending [$75,000 to $100,000] per day and it is all gone in five minutes,” Ekasak Thongthasawes said.
“We are totally lost. We lost staff we had worked with for so long. I believe this is worse than 9/11,” he said.
Touring the Sofitel site, Phang Nga Provincial Governor Anuwut Medhiwiboonwut said authorities had not found any survivors among the thousands still missing today, and only a few yesterday. “It’s very sad. So many people dead, and now what will the people here do for income?” he said.
While 300 people are believed to have been killed at the Sofitel alone, the visual devastation was tame in comparison to the main stretch of Khao Lak beach. There, the tidal waves completely destroyed entire structures, either leaving them collapsed on the beach or dragging their remains out to see.
Scores of bodies, parched and bloated from floating in the sea for more than 48 hours, were washing up onto shore throughout the day. The smell from the rotting flesh wafted in the air for hundreds of meters across the beach and up into the surrounding hills despite a breeze off the Andaman Sea.
Thai National Guard Captain Yirasap Sangee, who lead a detail yesterday on the beach, said most of the corpses they recovered were foreigners. Standing next to the ocean on a cloudless afternoon in front of the decimated Kaho Lak Beach Resort, he said they had been working non-stop for the last two days but that he thought the worst of it had passed.
That has yet to be seen, however, as the number of those missing is still in the thousands. Sweden alone may be missing as many as 1,500 people, according to Thorleif Hawi, who lives in Phuket and was volunteering at a station set up by the Swedish consulate at the make-shift disaster center in the Phuket Town Hall.
Despite the high foreign death toll, Thai officials said the majority of those killed here were locals.
At Watt Lak Kan, a local Buddhist temple, 42 bodies lay wrapped in sheets, some with limbs protruding, in the morning sun. By evening, that number had neared 100 as Buddhist religious workers brought more in throughout the day from the adjacent beach.
Coffins were stacked along side the corpses, but were used only when family members successfully identified a dead relative. One Japanese family took their son away at the same time as a dead Swedish woman was laid next to the rest of the corpses at the temple.
“It is not true that [the bodies] will be cremated,” Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai said yesterday, seeking to allay rumors that had spread here among foreign tourists. “The difficulty now is to identify the nationality of those who died, to identify whether they are Thais or foreigners, or if they are foreigners which country they are from.”
While some foreigners came to the temple to search for loved ones, hundreds of Thais pulled the sheets from the faces of the bodies looking for family members. Many of the locals sat under the shade of papaya trees waiting for more bodies to be delivered.
“Everyone here is sad and worried,” said Wichai, a tour guide from Phuket who only gave his first name. “They came from all over the country looking for their family and they haven’t found them.”
On Highway 4, which runs along the sea in Phang Nga, the tidal waves wrecked devastation as far as a kilometer inland. The ground floors of many buildings along the road were completely gutted while the second and third floors remained spotless.
A Thai Navy frigate was marooned in the jungle about 700 meters in from the sea while a bus which overturned killing 30 people remained mired in a four-meter deep lagoon. Rows of bodies lined the roads every few kilometers.
The first international aid arrived in Thailand yesterday, including rescue workers from Taiwan, and firefighters and paramedics from Germany. The United States would be sending C-105 reconnaissance planes with special technology to locate people stranded at sea, Foreign Minister Surakiart said.
© 2004 Rafael D. Frankel and The Chicago Tribune
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
At resorts, apocalypse -- then chaos
By Rafael D. Frankel
PHUKET, Thailand, Dec. 28—The day after massive tidal waves leveled large swaths of Thailand’s Southwestern coast was a mix between picking up the pieces for some and struggling to cope with severe loss for others here, as the death toll across Thailand climbed to 918 with 7,396 injured according to government officials.
While beach-front shop owners in this resort island returned to their businesses to comb what was left of their shattered livelihoods, thousands of foreign tourists and Thais scrambled to find their way off devastated islands, sought medical attention and searched desperately for some of 1,000 people officials estimate are still missing in the aftermath of a natural disaster the likes of which have never before been seen here.
Many of the missing are believed dead, Interior Minister Bhokin Balakula told the Chicago Tribune, indicating the loss of life could grow even higher over the days ahead. He added that most of the casulties were Thai.
The Thai military transformed Phuket Town Hall into a triage and support center yesterday. Thousands of foreigners and Thais who came down from the high ground of Phuket or arrived from some of Thailand’s smaller, adjacent islands this morning filed through. Local volunteers passed out free food and clothes to the survivors, many of whom had not eaten in a day and lost everything they owned in the tsunami.
Among the stricken were also scores who were hoping to find news of loved ones here whom they had not seen since the tsunami struck more than 24 hours beforehand.
“Everyone I’ve talked to has lost someone, sometimes entire families,” said Ita Caegrou, an Irishwoman who has lived in Thailand for six years. She was there offering free accommodation to survivors of the waves on behalf of a local language school which she teaches at.
One Belgian man in his 60’s, his bruised and scraped body clothed in donated hospital scrubs, pulled over Thai and foreign officials alike asking if they had seen his wife who he was vacationing with here. He was referred to a white board standing in the court yard where lists of the dead were posted along with pictures of corpses for which no identification had yet been made. A sign below the pictures read: “If you know their names, please alert the authorities.”
In another section of the yard, hundreds of tourists lined up on what was a sunny, temperate (by Thai standards) day, to have their finger prints taken for the issuance of temporary IDs. Some who were hurt or exhausted dragged plastic chairs with them in line while others were still dressed in swimming suits they were wearing at the time they fled their respective beaches for higher ground.
Inside the building, volunteer doctors and nurses treated those with minor bruises and lacerations while those with more serious injuries were transported by helicopter and truck to local hospitals. Upstairs, 30 countries setup make shift embassy stations in a converted conference room to assist tourists who were left without passports, money, and any means to contact loved ones in countries thousands of miles away.
Two men manning the U.S. embassy table were themselves on vacation in Phuket when the disaster struck. They had assisted around 50 stranded Americans who were injured or had lost passports, said Richard Hanrahan, who is normally posted to the U.S. consulate in Delhi.
As of last night, one American was confirmed dead here, a U.S. embassy spokesman said.
Nearly to a person, foreigners who were caught in the tidal waves said they were grateful for the hospitality and genuine caring so many of the local people had provided them. And Jacob ***, a representative of the Israeli embassy said he was impressed with the response Thailand had mounted to the disaster.
At the crowded and chaotic Phuket Airport, all the survivors from Koh Phi Phi and Phang Nga Bay—two of the worst stricken areas—told stories of barely escaping the colossal onslaught that the successive tidal waves heaved against the beaches.
Clair Kent, 40, from England, sat on a luggage x-ray machine with her three children, 6, 8, and 11, while her husband attempted to find a way home for their family after they saw hundreds of bungalows all around them, most with people inside, washed to sea from the vantage point of their beach-front hotel roof in Phang Nga.
When helicopters came to their hotel to rescue Thai Princess Ubolrat, who’s son Boom Jensen was killed in the wave, Kent thought “they would come back for us. But they didn’t,” she said. After two hours, when the water began to recede, her family “walked through mud, up the hill” until they were found by the Thai owner of the hotel who kept them at his house that night.
“These are all his clothes. Just that one t-shirt,” Kent said, pointing at her 11-year-old daughter, “belongs to us. Everything we had is gone.
“But we were very, very lucky,” she added.
On Koh Phi Phi, a popular destination for backpackers, the scene was “apocalyptic” after the wave hit, one survivor said, while others described mass chaos with zero direction from the police or any authorities.
The anarchy combined with the destruction and fear—rumors continued throughout the day that more waves were incoming—led to scenes of mass hysteria, Dutch traveler Floris Havelaar, 27, said.
He and his girlfriend, Claire Knight, 21, spent the night in the higher jungle off the beach along with hundreds of others. During the night, fires which were started by the survivors to ward off mosquitoes spread, Knight said, and people already in a state of paranoia began screaming.
“Everybody panicked. There were hundreds of people running over each other. And every time someone screamed it happened again,” she said.
When the sun rose and the couple began making their way down the hills and toward the pier to escape the island, they saw scores of bodies strewn across the flattened landscape and shopping quarters on the island where “The Beach” was filmed.
“There were so many bodies down by the pier. A girl, 17 or 18, was stroking the hair of her dead mom,” Havelaar said. “And there were so many people trying to get off the pier onto the boats the whole [pier] was shaking.”
Down on Patong Beach, the hardest hit area of Phuket, locals and tourists were walking the beach and the main street yesterday in near silence as they surveyed the damage from the day before.
Store owners sat stunned in their shops before slowly beginning the long clean-up job in front of them. They picked their way through the debris of restaurant menus, mannequins, and Christmas decorations strewn clear across the beach and 500 meters up from the water. Everything was coated in a fine layer of sand deposited by the waves.
Twisted iron support beams hung from punctured ceilings in many of the shops while corrugated metal sheathes, once used as garage doors, were torn to pieces.
Cars stacked three high were piled on top of each other on the road just off the beach and one boat named the “Good Luck” nested in the remnants of its owners restaurant.
On the beach during a picture-perfect sunset, among capsized boats and tree trunks snapped like twigs, a scattering of tourists walked the sands as they would on any day at that time here.
Kid Koernoon, 29, a life guard from Phuket, said it was time now to “clean it up and make everything new. But we don’t know where to start,” he said. “This high season is gone, but maybe in a couple years it could be like before. But who knows?”
Other shop owners said they would probably pack up what was left and go to Bangkok to look for work.
For its part, the Thai government kicked its rescue and support operations into high gear across the country yesterday, with the Thai Air Force flying survivors from Phuket back to Bangkok in five C-130 military transport planes. Bangkok Airways and Nok Airways were also providing some free flights back to Bangkok.
The Thai Navy continued its search and rescue operations across the Andaman Sea, the interior minister said. While they were focusing on their rescue efforts over the last two days, they would soon turn their attention to recovering the hundreds of bodies scattered across Thailand’s beaches and seas, Bhokin said.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, touring Koh Phi Phi yesterday morning, estimated the economic costs of the damage at around $500 million. So far he has not called for foreign aid money to assist Thailand with recuperating from the disaster, unlike the leaders of many of the other stricken countries.
On a walking tour of Patong Beach, Finance Minister Somkid Jurisripitak predicted Phuket would bounce back within a year. “It is not permanent. The problem is how to revitalize the local entrepreneurs,” he said.
© 2004 Rafael D. Frankel and The Chicago Tribune
PHUKET, Thailand, Dec. 28—The day after massive tidal waves leveled large swaths of Thailand’s Southwestern coast was a mix between picking up the pieces for some and struggling to cope with severe loss for others here, as the death toll across Thailand climbed to 918 with 7,396 injured according to government officials.
While beach-front shop owners in this resort island returned to their businesses to comb what was left of their shattered livelihoods, thousands of foreign tourists and Thais scrambled to find their way off devastated islands, sought medical attention and searched desperately for some of 1,000 people officials estimate are still missing in the aftermath of a natural disaster the likes of which have never before been seen here.
Many of the missing are believed dead, Interior Minister Bhokin Balakula told the Chicago Tribune, indicating the loss of life could grow even higher over the days ahead. He added that most of the casulties were Thai.
The Thai military transformed Phuket Town Hall into a triage and support center yesterday. Thousands of foreigners and Thais who came down from the high ground of Phuket or arrived from some of Thailand’s smaller, adjacent islands this morning filed through. Local volunteers passed out free food and clothes to the survivors, many of whom had not eaten in a day and lost everything they owned in the tsunami.
Among the stricken were also scores who were hoping to find news of loved ones here whom they had not seen since the tsunami struck more than 24 hours beforehand.
“Everyone I’ve talked to has lost someone, sometimes entire families,” said Ita Caegrou, an Irishwoman who has lived in Thailand for six years. She was there offering free accommodation to survivors of the waves on behalf of a local language school which she teaches at.
One Belgian man in his 60’s, his bruised and scraped body clothed in donated hospital scrubs, pulled over Thai and foreign officials alike asking if they had seen his wife who he was vacationing with here. He was referred to a white board standing in the court yard where lists of the dead were posted along with pictures of corpses for which no identification had yet been made. A sign below the pictures read: “If you know their names, please alert the authorities.”
In another section of the yard, hundreds of tourists lined up on what was a sunny, temperate (by Thai standards) day, to have their finger prints taken for the issuance of temporary IDs. Some who were hurt or exhausted dragged plastic chairs with them in line while others were still dressed in swimming suits they were wearing at the time they fled their respective beaches for higher ground.
Inside the building, volunteer doctors and nurses treated those with minor bruises and lacerations while those with more serious injuries were transported by helicopter and truck to local hospitals. Upstairs, 30 countries setup make shift embassy stations in a converted conference room to assist tourists who were left without passports, money, and any means to contact loved ones in countries thousands of miles away.
Two men manning the U.S. embassy table were themselves on vacation in Phuket when the disaster struck. They had assisted around 50 stranded Americans who were injured or had lost passports, said Richard Hanrahan, who is normally posted to the U.S. consulate in Delhi.
As of last night, one American was confirmed dead here, a U.S. embassy spokesman said.
Nearly to a person, foreigners who were caught in the tidal waves said they were grateful for the hospitality and genuine caring so many of the local people had provided them. And Jacob ***, a representative of the Israeli embassy said he was impressed with the response Thailand had mounted to the disaster.
At the crowded and chaotic Phuket Airport, all the survivors from Koh Phi Phi and Phang Nga Bay—two of the worst stricken areas—told stories of barely escaping the colossal onslaught that the successive tidal waves heaved against the beaches.
Clair Kent, 40, from England, sat on a luggage x-ray machine with her three children, 6, 8, and 11, while her husband attempted to find a way home for their family after they saw hundreds of bungalows all around them, most with people inside, washed to sea from the vantage point of their beach-front hotel roof in Phang Nga.
When helicopters came to their hotel to rescue Thai Princess Ubolrat, who’s son Boom Jensen was killed in the wave, Kent thought “they would come back for us. But they didn’t,” she said. After two hours, when the water began to recede, her family “walked through mud, up the hill” until they were found by the Thai owner of the hotel who kept them at his house that night.
“These are all his clothes. Just that one t-shirt,” Kent said, pointing at her 11-year-old daughter, “belongs to us. Everything we had is gone.
“But we were very, very lucky,” she added.
On Koh Phi Phi, a popular destination for backpackers, the scene was “apocalyptic” after the wave hit, one survivor said, while others described mass chaos with zero direction from the police or any authorities.
The anarchy combined with the destruction and fear—rumors continued throughout the day that more waves were incoming—led to scenes of mass hysteria, Dutch traveler Floris Havelaar, 27, said.
He and his girlfriend, Claire Knight, 21, spent the night in the higher jungle off the beach along with hundreds of others. During the night, fires which were started by the survivors to ward off mosquitoes spread, Knight said, and people already in a state of paranoia began screaming.
“Everybody panicked. There were hundreds of people running over each other. And every time someone screamed it happened again,” she said.
When the sun rose and the couple began making their way down the hills and toward the pier to escape the island, they saw scores of bodies strewn across the flattened landscape and shopping quarters on the island where “The Beach” was filmed.
“There were so many bodies down by the pier. A girl, 17 or 18, was stroking the hair of her dead mom,” Havelaar said. “And there were so many people trying to get off the pier onto the boats the whole [pier] was shaking.”
Down on Patong Beach, the hardest hit area of Phuket, locals and tourists were walking the beach and the main street yesterday in near silence as they surveyed the damage from the day before.
Store owners sat stunned in their shops before slowly beginning the long clean-up job in front of them. They picked their way through the debris of restaurant menus, mannequins, and Christmas decorations strewn clear across the beach and 500 meters up from the water. Everything was coated in a fine layer of sand deposited by the waves.
Twisted iron support beams hung from punctured ceilings in many of the shops while corrugated metal sheathes, once used as garage doors, were torn to pieces.
Cars stacked three high were piled on top of each other on the road just off the beach and one boat named the “Good Luck” nested in the remnants of its owners restaurant.
On the beach during a picture-perfect sunset, among capsized boats and tree trunks snapped like twigs, a scattering of tourists walked the sands as they would on any day at that time here.
Kid Koernoon, 29, a life guard from Phuket, said it was time now to “clean it up and make everything new. But we don’t know where to start,” he said. “This high season is gone, but maybe in a couple years it could be like before. But who knows?”
Other shop owners said they would probably pack up what was left and go to Bangkok to look for work.
For its part, the Thai government kicked its rescue and support operations into high gear across the country yesterday, with the Thai Air Force flying survivors from Phuket back to Bangkok in five C-130 military transport planes. Bangkok Airways and Nok Airways were also providing some free flights back to Bangkok.
The Thai Navy continued its search and rescue operations across the Andaman Sea, the interior minister said. While they were focusing on their rescue efforts over the last two days, they would soon turn their attention to recovering the hundreds of bodies scattered across Thailand’s beaches and seas, Bhokin said.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, touring Koh Phi Phi yesterday morning, estimated the economic costs of the damage at around $500 million. So far he has not called for foreign aid money to assist Thailand with recuperating from the disaster, unlike the leaders of many of the other stricken countries.
On a walking tour of Patong Beach, Finance Minister Somkid Jurisripitak predicted Phuket would bounce back within a year. “It is not permanent. The problem is how to revitalize the local entrepreneurs,” he said.
© 2004 Rafael D. Frankel and The Chicago Tribune
Monday, December 27, 2004
Quake, waves kill thousands
By Rafael D. Frankel
BANGKOK, Dec. 27—Three successive waves—each bigger than the last—slammed into the beaches, resorts and shopping centers of Thailand’s Southwestern coast yesterday morning, as white-sand beaches packed with holiday season tourists were turned into scenes of carnage and mayhem.
Overall, at least 392 people were killed and over 5,000 were injured across Thailand’s Andaman islands and coast when tidal waves the likes of which have never before been seen here hit six provinces, government officials said. The death toll will likely rise further with at least hundreds if not thousands still missing, including many who were on ferry boats shuttling between Thailand’s myriad of tropical islands.
Phuket island, Thailand’s most popular island getaway, was the scene of much of the death and destruction as the tsunami swept away sunbathers to sea and completely submerged entire hotel blocks, according to eye witnesses.
“All of a sudden I just heard screaming and explosions and I saw water washing up between hotels, cars being thrown into lobbies, underground shopping centers being filled with water with people underneath,” said Conrad Dzwonkieiwcz, an American tourist who was on Phuket’s popular Patong beach.
“People were getting hit by debris, cars, trapped against buildings. I saw one person that just disappeared into the water,” Dzwonkieiwcz said, adding he was about 100 meters off the beach. “When the water washed up the sunbathers were overcome by it. At least a dozen were washed into the sea.”
According to the foreign ministry, 130 were killed and nearly 700 were injured in Phuket while still 214 people were missing.
“It was total chaos. Boats were ripping into one another and being ripped apart—just total carnage,” said Jeff Hoch, an American who lives on the beach in Phuket. There were three rip tides about 3 meters up from typical sea level just rushing in and out. There were Catamarans split in half, there were anchors popping up from the water.”
Around half of all those confirmed killed here appeared to be in Phang Nga bay north of Phuket, an area renown for its diving, where at least 181 people died. That was the highest death toll for any district and it could rise much further still as government officials said there are still hundreds unaccounted for.
Many of the bodies in Phang Nga, including at least a dozen foreigners, were taken from the beach to a local pagoda (temple), the Associated Press reported member of parliament Jurit Laksanawisi saying.
The timing of the tidal wave was both fortunate and not. The time between Christmas and New Year’s is peak tourist season in Thailand, a country which saw 12 million tourists come last year alone in part to visit its picturesque white sand beaches strewn with palm trees.
But the waves, which witnesses measured at between 3 and 5 meters tall, struck around 9:30 in the morning local time, and beaches that later in the day would have had thousands of people sunbathing on their sands had only a few hundred, Dzwonkieiwcz said.
Still, the damage to Thailand’s Southwestern coast on the Andaman sea was extensive. The larger of the twin Koh Phi Phi islands, made famous as the set for the filming of “The Beach” staring Leonardo DiCaprio, was totally devastated.
Pictures taken from helicopters of the island showed utter destruction with resorts, shops, and bars flattened. At least 200 bungalows at two popular resorts were washed to sea, Chan Marongtaechar, the owner of the PP Princess Resort and PP Charlie Beach Resort who was in Bangkok, said his staff reported to him.
The number of dead on Phi Phi alone according to various accounts of they scene there (not included in overall dead count) was estimated at 200. One helicopter pilot who was evacuating survivors from the island said bodies were strewn across the white sand beaches, which just hours before were covered with sunbathers enjoying a beautiful morning after Christmas. Some of those he was racing to the mainland died en route.
“The whole island is gone,” Apinan Thanyapreedakun said. “There were only two buildings left standing.” He added that 90 percent of the boats on the island were destroyed.
Rescue helicopters were working through last night and this morning to evacuate those in need of urgent care from Koh Phi Phi, which sits 45 minutes off the mainland. Officials said 4,000 tourists were stranded there and 10,000 were stranded on Phuket.
As of this morning, the Thai navy was still conducting relief operations all around the Andaman coast and islands using sea ships and helicopters. They were bringing food to survivors and evacuating those believed to be in danger of further waves which could result from aftershocks of the earthquake.
Waves of varying height hit six southern provinces here, killing fisherman and divers, as well as residents who live along the coast. Rescue teams fanned out across those areas last night and this morning searching for survivors among Thailand’s myriad of picturesque islands in the Andaman sea. Authorities also sent helicopters searching for divers around the Andaman coast, where jagged lime stone rocks shoot out of warm turquoise waters replete with brightly colored fish and coral.
Most of the damage to life and property occurred on those islands, Government Spokesman Jakrapob Penkair said. “Unfortunately, many foreigners and expatriates lost their lives because it’s Christmas and there are so many here right now.” Getting a firm count on how many were killed will be “very hard to know because there could be many people are on more obscure islands,” he said.
It was unknown how many of the dead across Thailand were foreigners though Foreign Ministry Deputy Spokesman Kiattikhun Chartpraserp said “there were a lot of Scandinavians killed.” (Thailand is a particularly popular destination for people from northern Europe who come here to escape the winters.)
Embassies around Bangkok were working in high gear the day after Christmas and again today trying to assess how many of their nationals were injured or killed in the disaster. Given the level of destruction and Thailand’s global popularity as a tourist venue, it is likely casualties were suffered from many countries.
A U.S. embassy spokeswoman said they had no specific information about how many Americans were killed or injured, but that she was “sure there were some.” Consular officials were on there way down to Phuket this morning to assess the situation, she said.
In one bit of good news, rescue workers saved 70-80 people who were out at sea visiting the famed Emerald Cave off the island of Koh Muk. The snorkelers became trapped as they navigated the five-minute swim through a dark marine cave which opens up to a fully enclosed lagoon. Two people were killed when the waves hit and the others were thrown into the lagoon where they were trapped for at least five hours, officials said.
Heavy damage was reported in Krabi Province, another popular tourist destination just south of Phuket known for its rock climbing. At least 45 people were killed there.
Power was out on Phuket last night as were land-fixed telephone lines. This morning, mobile phone networks were still jammed all over the country, making communication with anyone on the islands difficult.
“Nothing like this has ever happened in our country before," Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said in an address to the nation last night. He is now in Phuket.
The Thai-American son of Princess Ubolrat, Poom Jensen, was among the missing. He disappeared while jet skiing off Phang Nga Island, the Associated Press reported.
© 2004 Rafael D. Frankel and The Chicago Tribune
BANGKOK, Dec. 27—Three successive waves—each bigger than the last—slammed into the beaches, resorts and shopping centers of Thailand’s Southwestern coast yesterday morning, as white-sand beaches packed with holiday season tourists were turned into scenes of carnage and mayhem.
Overall, at least 392 people were killed and over 5,000 were injured across Thailand’s Andaman islands and coast when tidal waves the likes of which have never before been seen here hit six provinces, government officials said. The death toll will likely rise further with at least hundreds if not thousands still missing, including many who were on ferry boats shuttling between Thailand’s myriad of tropical islands.
Phuket island, Thailand’s most popular island getaway, was the scene of much of the death and destruction as the tsunami swept away sunbathers to sea and completely submerged entire hotel blocks, according to eye witnesses.
“All of a sudden I just heard screaming and explosions and I saw water washing up between hotels, cars being thrown into lobbies, underground shopping centers being filled with water with people underneath,” said Conrad Dzwonkieiwcz, an American tourist who was on Phuket’s popular Patong beach.
“People were getting hit by debris, cars, trapped against buildings. I saw one person that just disappeared into the water,” Dzwonkieiwcz said, adding he was about 100 meters off the beach. “When the water washed up the sunbathers were overcome by it. At least a dozen were washed into the sea.”
According to the foreign ministry, 130 were killed and nearly 700 were injured in Phuket while still 214 people were missing.
“It was total chaos. Boats were ripping into one another and being ripped apart—just total carnage,” said Jeff Hoch, an American who lives on the beach in Phuket. There were three rip tides about 3 meters up from typical sea level just rushing in and out. There were Catamarans split in half, there were anchors popping up from the water.”
Around half of all those confirmed killed here appeared to be in Phang Nga bay north of Phuket, an area renown for its diving, where at least 181 people died. That was the highest death toll for any district and it could rise much further still as government officials said there are still hundreds unaccounted for.
Many of the bodies in Phang Nga, including at least a dozen foreigners, were taken from the beach to a local pagoda (temple), the Associated Press reported member of parliament Jurit Laksanawisi saying.
The timing of the tidal wave was both fortunate and not. The time between Christmas and New Year’s is peak tourist season in Thailand, a country which saw 12 million tourists come last year alone in part to visit its picturesque white sand beaches strewn with palm trees.
But the waves, which witnesses measured at between 3 and 5 meters tall, struck around 9:30 in the morning local time, and beaches that later in the day would have had thousands of people sunbathing on their sands had only a few hundred, Dzwonkieiwcz said.
Still, the damage to Thailand’s Southwestern coast on the Andaman sea was extensive. The larger of the twin Koh Phi Phi islands, made famous as the set for the filming of “The Beach” staring Leonardo DiCaprio, was totally devastated.
Pictures taken from helicopters of the island showed utter destruction with resorts, shops, and bars flattened. At least 200 bungalows at two popular resorts were washed to sea, Chan Marongtaechar, the owner of the PP Princess Resort and PP Charlie Beach Resort who was in Bangkok, said his staff reported to him.
The number of dead on Phi Phi alone according to various accounts of they scene there (not included in overall dead count) was estimated at 200. One helicopter pilot who was evacuating survivors from the island said bodies were strewn across the white sand beaches, which just hours before were covered with sunbathers enjoying a beautiful morning after Christmas. Some of those he was racing to the mainland died en route.
“The whole island is gone,” Apinan Thanyapreedakun said. “There were only two buildings left standing.” He added that 90 percent of the boats on the island were destroyed.
Rescue helicopters were working through last night and this morning to evacuate those in need of urgent care from Koh Phi Phi, which sits 45 minutes off the mainland. Officials said 4,000 tourists were stranded there and 10,000 were stranded on Phuket.
As of this morning, the Thai navy was still conducting relief operations all around the Andaman coast and islands using sea ships and helicopters. They were bringing food to survivors and evacuating those believed to be in danger of further waves which could result from aftershocks of the earthquake.
Waves of varying height hit six southern provinces here, killing fisherman and divers, as well as residents who live along the coast. Rescue teams fanned out across those areas last night and this morning searching for survivors among Thailand’s myriad of picturesque islands in the Andaman sea. Authorities also sent helicopters searching for divers around the Andaman coast, where jagged lime stone rocks shoot out of warm turquoise waters replete with brightly colored fish and coral.
Most of the damage to life and property occurred on those islands, Government Spokesman Jakrapob Penkair said. “Unfortunately, many foreigners and expatriates lost their lives because it’s Christmas and there are so many here right now.” Getting a firm count on how many were killed will be “very hard to know because there could be many people are on more obscure islands,” he said.
It was unknown how many of the dead across Thailand were foreigners though Foreign Ministry Deputy Spokesman Kiattikhun Chartpraserp said “there were a lot of Scandinavians killed.” (Thailand is a particularly popular destination for people from northern Europe who come here to escape the winters.)
Embassies around Bangkok were working in high gear the day after Christmas and again today trying to assess how many of their nationals were injured or killed in the disaster. Given the level of destruction and Thailand’s global popularity as a tourist venue, it is likely casualties were suffered from many countries.
A U.S. embassy spokeswoman said they had no specific information about how many Americans were killed or injured, but that she was “sure there were some.” Consular officials were on there way down to Phuket this morning to assess the situation, she said.
In one bit of good news, rescue workers saved 70-80 people who were out at sea visiting the famed Emerald Cave off the island of Koh Muk. The snorkelers became trapped as they navigated the five-minute swim through a dark marine cave which opens up to a fully enclosed lagoon. Two people were killed when the waves hit and the others were thrown into the lagoon where they were trapped for at least five hours, officials said.
Heavy damage was reported in Krabi Province, another popular tourist destination just south of Phuket known for its rock climbing. At least 45 people were killed there.
Power was out on Phuket last night as were land-fixed telephone lines. This morning, mobile phone networks were still jammed all over the country, making communication with anyone on the islands difficult.
“Nothing like this has ever happened in our country before," Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said in an address to the nation last night. He is now in Phuket.
The Thai-American son of Princess Ubolrat, Poom Jensen, was among the missing. He disappeared while jet skiing off Phang Nga Island, the Associated Press reported.
© 2004 Rafael D. Frankel and The Chicago Tribune
Saturday, July 17, 2004
New Malaysian premier set for 1st visit to White House
By Rafael D. Frankel
Special to the Tribune
Published July 17, 2004
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- When Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi makes his first visit to the White House on Sunday, President Bush will be meeting with a man known at home more for what he is not than what he is.
Such is the fate of the successor to Mahathir Mohamad, who retired in October after 22 years as prime minister. But in Malaysia and around the world, people are breathing a sigh of relief after two decades of Mahathir's rhetoric taking a toll even as he retained broad political support at home.
It is the lack of that often-tactless oration that most distinguishes Abdullah, 64, from Mahathir, diplomats and political figures say. Nearly everyone agrees that it is a welcome change of pace.
"We had a person who was so domineering," said Steven Gan, editor in chief of the Malaysian news Web site Malaysiakini. "This guy is willing to listen instead of shoving his ideas down your throat."
Though "Pak Lah," or Uncle Abdullah, as he is called here, spent a brief stint in opposition to Mahathir in the 1980s, Abdullah is a man of Malaysia's old guard, and many here feel that means political change can only come slowly.
"Malaysia is like a big tanker: It takes a heck of a long time to change direction," said Karim Raslan, a lawyer and political writer. "You get swamped by the sheer weight of trying to move all [the old politicians]."
While Mahathir is out of the picture, Abdullah is surrounded with many of the same people from the previous administration who drew charges of cronyism under his predecessor.
Upon assuming office, Abdullah promised to tackle corruption and improve transparency in government contracts--two of the main complaints voiced by nearly all Malaysians under Mahathir. Two minor political figures were arrested on corruption charges, but no big names have been taken down despite what diplomats and opposition figures say is sufficient evidence to do so.
Both supporters and foes of Abdullah's government acknowledge that, personality aside, little has changed. Though local journalists say Malaysia is inching its way to a free press, reporters here do not enjoy the freedoms of other countries in the region such as the Philippines and Indonesia.
"He's basically a continuation of Mahathir in terms of policy and the repressive rules and law that we have in Malaysia," said Syed Azman, a Central Committee member of the Islamic opposition party PAS.The continuation of the Internal Security Act, which allows the indefinite detention of anyone deemed a national security threat, and the imprisonment of Anwar Ibrahim, a popular opposition figure jailed by Mahathir in 1999, shows Malaysia is "still a mostly closed, politically repressive society," Syed said.
Whether most Malaysians want substantial change is a different story.
"Malaysians look south and see the problems Indonesia has had with democracy and say, `We don't want that.' And they look east to the Philippines and say, `We don't want that either,'" a Western diplomat here said. "The model they like the most is Singapore."
"The bottom line is that this is a majority Muslim country that works," said Raslan.
A moderate Muslim country that strongly supports the U.S.-led war on terrorism but strongly opposes the Iraq war, Malaysia's rapid economic development over the past few decades has propelled the country to become a major trading partner of the United States.
©2004 The Chicago Tribune
Special to the Tribune
Published July 17, 2004
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- When Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi makes his first visit to the White House on Sunday, President Bush will be meeting with a man known at home more for what he is not than what he is.
Such is the fate of the successor to Mahathir Mohamad, who retired in October after 22 years as prime minister. But in Malaysia and around the world, people are breathing a sigh of relief after two decades of Mahathir's rhetoric taking a toll even as he retained broad political support at home.
It is the lack of that often-tactless oration that most distinguishes Abdullah, 64, from Mahathir, diplomats and political figures say. Nearly everyone agrees that it is a welcome change of pace.
"We had a person who was so domineering," said Steven Gan, editor in chief of the Malaysian news Web site Malaysiakini. "This guy is willing to listen instead of shoving his ideas down your throat."
Though "Pak Lah," or Uncle Abdullah, as he is called here, spent a brief stint in opposition to Mahathir in the 1980s, Abdullah is a man of Malaysia's old guard, and many here feel that means political change can only come slowly.
"Malaysia is like a big tanker: It takes a heck of a long time to change direction," said Karim Raslan, a lawyer and political writer. "You get swamped by the sheer weight of trying to move all [the old politicians]."
While Mahathir is out of the picture, Abdullah is surrounded with many of the same people from the previous administration who drew charges of cronyism under his predecessor.
Upon assuming office, Abdullah promised to tackle corruption and improve transparency in government contracts--two of the main complaints voiced by nearly all Malaysians under Mahathir. Two minor political figures were arrested on corruption charges, but no big names have been taken down despite what diplomats and opposition figures say is sufficient evidence to do so.
Both supporters and foes of Abdullah's government acknowledge that, personality aside, little has changed. Though local journalists say Malaysia is inching its way to a free press, reporters here do not enjoy the freedoms of other countries in the region such as the Philippines and Indonesia.
"He's basically a continuation of Mahathir in terms of policy and the repressive rules and law that we have in Malaysia," said Syed Azman, a Central Committee member of the Islamic opposition party PAS.The continuation of the Internal Security Act, which allows the indefinite detention of anyone deemed a national security threat, and the imprisonment of Anwar Ibrahim, a popular opposition figure jailed by Mahathir in 1999, shows Malaysia is "still a mostly closed, politically repressive society," Syed said.
Whether most Malaysians want substantial change is a different story.
"Malaysians look south and see the problems Indonesia has had with democracy and say, `We don't want that.' And they look east to the Philippines and say, `We don't want that either,'" a Western diplomat here said. "The model they like the most is Singapore."
"The bottom line is that this is a majority Muslim country that works," said Raslan.
A moderate Muslim country that strongly supports the U.S.-led war on terrorism but strongly opposes the Iraq war, Malaysia's rapid economic development over the past few decades has propelled the country to become a major trading partner of the United States.
©2004 The Chicago Tribune
Friday, April 02, 2004
Laotian rebels trickle out of jungle to accept amnesty
1,200 seek new lives
after years of war
By Rafael D. Frankel
Special to the Tribune
VIENTIANE, Laos—As many as 1,200 Hmong rebels who were fighting the communist Laotian
government have laid down their weapons and accepted amnesty in the past month, according to diplomats.
Whether that represents the beginning of the end of the rebellion remains to be seen. Diplomats were cautiously optimistic that a combination of factors may soon lead to the remainder of the 3,000 to 5,000 rebels surrendering their arms and being
resettled under a government amnesty plan.
Based in jungle pockets, the low-level Hmong rebellion is the last remnant of the Indochina conflicts of the 1960s and ’70s that included the Vietnam War. Some of the fighters who accepted the amnesty have come out of the jungle for the first time in almost 30 years, sources said. Others, who were born into the rebellion, have left the forest for the first time in their lives.
The CIA originally recruited and funded a group of about 30,000 Hmong to fight the Viet Cong and Pathet Lao armies more than 30 years ago.
Hmong fighters who were not able to escape Laos after the communists took over in 1975 fled into the jungles, where they and their decedents have lived ever since.
At that time the number of Hmong rebels and their family members in Laos was believed
to be 15,000. However, after nearly three decades of fighting, aging and desertion, diplomats now estimate the rebels number as few as 3,000.
U.S. officials said a group of several hundred people emerged from their havens in
the northeastern province of Xieng Khouang and about 200 came out of the forest surrounding Luang Prabang, the ancient capital about 150 miles north of the current capital city of Vientiane. Other diplomats put the total at 1,200.
The Hmong who surrendered were given food, and the government paid for them to shop at local markets, several diplomats said. Those who had family in other parts of the country were provided transportation, while others were given parcels of land to farm.
Though the rebels and their families have emerged from the jungle sporadically since the end of the war in 1975, this is by far the largest group to surrender their weapons and come out of hiding.
The government does not acknowledge any Hmong rebellion in Laos and refused comment. But diplomats say there has been a strong carrot-andstick approach by the regime for
the past year, which may account for the surrenders.
The army stepped up its campaign against the rebels after two high-profile attacks by the Hmong on buses last year that killed dozens of people, including three foreigners. However, the government also has sent envoys to the rebels offering them
full amnesty and resettlement with family members in Laos or on government-provided land.
Those factors, plus a severe drought in much of the country and possibly some conciliatory remarks late last year in the United States from their former leader, Gen. Vang Pao, all may have contributed to the exodus from the jungle.
“But we simply don’t know for sure what has triggered this now,” said Douglas Hartwick, the U.S. ambassador to Laos. He added that U.S. officials had no direct contact with the Hmong who surrendered.
According to Hmong who have emerged in the past and reporters who have visited their
camps in restricted zones in the jungle, many of the nomadic rebels and their families are in poor health and spirits. They live mainly off nuts and roots and practice slash-and-burn agriculture. Most have suffered battle wounds.
“There is a very deep pain in the people in the forest who have been waiting for a triggering event to come out, and it never happened,” a Western observer here said. “Meanwhile, life is hard. They cannot grow crops, and the Lao military has been
tightening the noose around their necks.”
Diplomats hope the recent surrenders are the first in a series.
No doubt this is a watershed event,” one Western diplomat said. “I don’t think [the rebels] can fully reconstitute after such a significant degradation of their insurgency.”
But it would be premature to conclude that the last conflict of the Indochina wars finally is coming to an end, he said.
©2004 The Chicago Tribune
after years of war
By Rafael D. Frankel
Special to the Tribune
VIENTIANE, Laos—As many as 1,200 Hmong rebels who were fighting the communist Laotian
government have laid down their weapons and accepted amnesty in the past month, according to diplomats.
Whether that represents the beginning of the end of the rebellion remains to be seen. Diplomats were cautiously optimistic that a combination of factors may soon lead to the remainder of the 3,000 to 5,000 rebels surrendering their arms and being
resettled under a government amnesty plan.
Based in jungle pockets, the low-level Hmong rebellion is the last remnant of the Indochina conflicts of the 1960s and ’70s that included the Vietnam War. Some of the fighters who accepted the amnesty have come out of the jungle for the first time in almost 30 years, sources said. Others, who were born into the rebellion, have left the forest for the first time in their lives.
The CIA originally recruited and funded a group of about 30,000 Hmong to fight the Viet Cong and Pathet Lao armies more than 30 years ago.
Hmong fighters who were not able to escape Laos after the communists took over in 1975 fled into the jungles, where they and their decedents have lived ever since.
At that time the number of Hmong rebels and their family members in Laos was believed
to be 15,000. However, after nearly three decades of fighting, aging and desertion, diplomats now estimate the rebels number as few as 3,000.
U.S. officials said a group of several hundred people emerged from their havens in
the northeastern province of Xieng Khouang and about 200 came out of the forest surrounding Luang Prabang, the ancient capital about 150 miles north of the current capital city of Vientiane. Other diplomats put the total at 1,200.
The Hmong who surrendered were given food, and the government paid for them to shop at local markets, several diplomats said. Those who had family in other parts of the country were provided transportation, while others were given parcels of land to farm.
Though the rebels and their families have emerged from the jungle sporadically since the end of the war in 1975, this is by far the largest group to surrender their weapons and come out of hiding.
The government does not acknowledge any Hmong rebellion in Laos and refused comment. But diplomats say there has been a strong carrot-andstick approach by the regime for
the past year, which may account for the surrenders.
The army stepped up its campaign against the rebels after two high-profile attacks by the Hmong on buses last year that killed dozens of people, including three foreigners. However, the government also has sent envoys to the rebels offering them
full amnesty and resettlement with family members in Laos or on government-provided land.
Those factors, plus a severe drought in much of the country and possibly some conciliatory remarks late last year in the United States from their former leader, Gen. Vang Pao, all may have contributed to the exodus from the jungle.
“But we simply don’t know for sure what has triggered this now,” said Douglas Hartwick, the U.S. ambassador to Laos. He added that U.S. officials had no direct contact with the Hmong who surrendered.
According to Hmong who have emerged in the past and reporters who have visited their
camps in restricted zones in the jungle, many of the nomadic rebels and their families are in poor health and spirits. They live mainly off nuts and roots and practice slash-and-burn agriculture. Most have suffered battle wounds.
“There is a very deep pain in the people in the forest who have been waiting for a triggering event to come out, and it never happened,” a Western observer here said. “Meanwhile, life is hard. They cannot grow crops, and the Lao military has been
tightening the noose around their necks.”
Diplomats hope the recent surrenders are the first in a series.
No doubt this is a watershed event,” one Western diplomat said. “I don’t think [the rebels] can fully reconstitute after such a significant degradation of their insurgency.”
But it would be premature to conclude that the last conflict of the Indochina wars finally is coming to an end, he said.
©2004 The Chicago Tribune
Saturday, March 20, 2004
In Cambodia, a business is run at whim of river's rise and fall
MEKONG JOURNAL
By Rafael D. Frankel, Globe Correspondent, 3/20/2004
KAMPEE, Cambodia -- All along the Mekong, life ebbs and flows with the river's seasonal moods. In this village, a cafe rises and falls with it.
Each year in late January, when the river is low, Lon But Pun and six workers begin fastening the couple of dozen straw huts built on bamboo stilts that fit snugly into the rocks below. Then they lay straw roofs. And every year around April, as the Mekong swells with the melting snow in Tibet and later with the monsoon rains that sweep through Southeast Asia, the cafe is broken down. The important materials, such as the wood frames for the huts, are hauled back ashore, while the bamboo and straw are left and wash away with the rising tide that eventually spills into the South China Sea.
"We are only here for maybe four months every year. But it is a good four months," said Lon But Pun, 40. When the river is low in Kampee, a village of a few hundred people, small islands form, and rapids flow beneath the cafe.
Although the cafe does not make her much money, Lon But Pun said she enjoys the break from her other job. The remainder of the year, like the majority of people in remote Kratie province, she is a rice farmer.
For centuries, civilization here has been inexorably linked to the Mekong. The river, the world's 12th-longest and 10th-largest in terms of volume, also runs through Tibet, China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, providing a bounty of seafood and irrigation for rice crops.
Even in the 21st century, when motor boats have all but replaced paddle-driven skiffs and television antennae have sprouted atop many villagers' three-walled shacks, the basics of life have changed little. Lives are dictated not by a calendar or a school schedule, but by the river.
Recently, the river was doing its best impression of a grizzly bear in hibernation. It was a calm and soothing presence, and the cafe was drawing local tourists and a few backpackers along the section of the river from Cambodia to Laos.
It is not a fancy affair, and the menu (delivered verbally) is short. Seating consists of straw mats on the bamboo floors, while food and drink is limited to Angkor beer, potent Mekong whiskey, and such seasonal fruits as pineapple, Chinese pears, and dragonfruit.
The scenery is the big draw. The village is about 100 miles upriver from the capital, Phnom Penh. It takes two days to get here by water, the route demarcated by crumbling French colonial-era cement pylons. By car, on the recently reconstructed national highway, it is an eight-hour drive.
"It's so beautiful," said Riphy Ea, 32, a tourist from Phnom Penh who works for a foreign aid organization.
Across the small islands made of sand dunes and overgrown brush, the banks of the river rested 40 feet above water level. As four water buffaloes wallowed in shallow water bathed in the late-afternoon light, Riphy Ea smiled.
"I've never been here before, but look at how natural it is. I already want to come again next year," he said.
But before then, the Mekong will have its way. And if Lon But Pun has her way, and erects the cafe for a ninth year in 2005, it will be when the river says she can.
"Yes, I will try to build it again next year, but it is always different," she said. After the eight-month rainy season, the rocks and islands are never all in the same place.
©2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
By Rafael D. Frankel, Globe Correspondent, 3/20/2004
KAMPEE, Cambodia -- All along the Mekong, life ebbs and flows with the river's seasonal moods. In this village, a cafe rises and falls with it.
Each year in late January, when the river is low, Lon But Pun and six workers begin fastening the couple of dozen straw huts built on bamboo stilts that fit snugly into the rocks below. Then they lay straw roofs. And every year around April, as the Mekong swells with the melting snow in Tibet and later with the monsoon rains that sweep through Southeast Asia, the cafe is broken down. The important materials, such as the wood frames for the huts, are hauled back ashore, while the bamboo and straw are left and wash away with the rising tide that eventually spills into the South China Sea.
"We are only here for maybe four months every year. But it is a good four months," said Lon But Pun, 40. When the river is low in Kampee, a village of a few hundred people, small islands form, and rapids flow beneath the cafe.
Although the cafe does not make her much money, Lon But Pun said she enjoys the break from her other job. The remainder of the year, like the majority of people in remote Kratie province, she is a rice farmer.
For centuries, civilization here has been inexorably linked to the Mekong. The river, the world's 12th-longest and 10th-largest in terms of volume, also runs through Tibet, China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, providing a bounty of seafood and irrigation for rice crops.
Even in the 21st century, when motor boats have all but replaced paddle-driven skiffs and television antennae have sprouted atop many villagers' three-walled shacks, the basics of life have changed little. Lives are dictated not by a calendar or a school schedule, but by the river.
Recently, the river was doing its best impression of a grizzly bear in hibernation. It was a calm and soothing presence, and the cafe was drawing local tourists and a few backpackers along the section of the river from Cambodia to Laos.
It is not a fancy affair, and the menu (delivered verbally) is short. Seating consists of straw mats on the bamboo floors, while food and drink is limited to Angkor beer, potent Mekong whiskey, and such seasonal fruits as pineapple, Chinese pears, and dragonfruit.
The scenery is the big draw. The village is about 100 miles upriver from the capital, Phnom Penh. It takes two days to get here by water, the route demarcated by crumbling French colonial-era cement pylons. By car, on the recently reconstructed national highway, it is an eight-hour drive.
"It's so beautiful," said Riphy Ea, 32, a tourist from Phnom Penh who works for a foreign aid organization.
Across the small islands made of sand dunes and overgrown brush, the banks of the river rested 40 feet above water level. As four water buffaloes wallowed in shallow water bathed in the late-afternoon light, Riphy Ea smiled.
"I've never been here before, but look at how natural it is. I already want to come again next year," he said.
But before then, the Mekong will have its way. And if Lon But Pun has her way, and erects the cafe for a ninth year in 2005, it will be when the river says she can.
"Yes, I will try to build it again next year, but it is always different," she said. After the eight-month rainy season, the rocks and islands are never all in the same place.
©2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
Sunday, February 29, 2004
Cambodia's rights movement faces peril
Recent slayings renew old fears
By Rafael D. Frankel, Globe Correspondent, 2/29/2004
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- On a recent trip to a village along the banks of the Mekong River, Kem Sokha brought along not only his trusted bodyguard but also a private American security specialist.
Kem Sokha is not a politician, a big businessman, or a diplomat, but a leader in Cambodia's fledgling human rights movement. And he believes his life is in danger.
The recent brazen killings of a prominent labor organizer, Chea Vichea, and several others affiliated with an opposition political group have heightened the sense of lawlessness in Cambodia, where murder is seen as a common political tool -- and the rich and powerful seem above the law.
The nation's police, judiciary, and elections institutions are controlled by the ruling party, led by Prime Minister Hun Sen, and many Cambodians and foreign aid workers have little confidence that justice can be served.
"I fear the killing fields in Cambodia are still open," said Kem Sokha, president of the Cambodia Center for Human Rights, referring to the place the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime would kill its victims of torture from 1975 to 1979.
Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge member who deserted the regime and joined the resistance, has maintained his grip on power in one form or another for nearly two decades through collaboration with Vietnam, military coups, and elections deemed by international observers as lacking "free and fair" standards.
The most recent elections, in July, saw the ruling Cambodian People's Party win a majority of seats in Parliament, but not the two-thirds required to form a government. Since then, a tense political drama has heated up between the CPP and the Democratic Alliance, made up of two opposition parties. Although both sides talk of reaching a settlement soon, the stalemate persists.
The government crisis has coincided with a wave of high-profile murders the past few months.
Chea Vichea, 36, who was affiliated with the opposition Sam Rainsy Party, was killed Jan. 22 in broad daylight in a driveby shooting in Phnom Penh. A radio journalist, a famous actress, and her mother -- all associated with the Democratic Alliance -- were gunned down in a similar fashion.
Human rights workers and opposition leaders have seized on what they called a questionable investigation into Chea Vichea's killing, saying it shows the history of impunity that has plagued Cambodia for decades is still prevalent. Two suspects are being held; one accused police of beating him to force a confession.
Accusations have been leveled by the opposition and democracy organizations that the killings were intended as a warning to opposition leaders to join the prime minister in a government.
A ruling-party spokesman, Khieu Kanharith, rejected any idea that the killings were ordered by members of his party. , saying the allegations were political ploys. "If we wanted to use violence, why wouldn't we have hit someone higher up in the party?" he said.
But outside of the government, the killings have raised alarms.
"They certainly appear to be politically motivated," said Jackson Cox, the Cambodia director of the International Republican Institute, an American organization that promotes democracy around the world. "The political situation here is tense, and members of the opposition, both high and low, are being murdered."
The recent killings have foreign relief workers and many Cambodian wondering whether Cambodia's development as a democracy has foundered after making great strides since the United Nations launched a $2 billion relief effort in 1992.
The government points out that Cambodia was rebuilding from total disaster. While many problems remain, the political situation is much less violent than in the past, Khieu Kanharith said.
The opposition rejects such reasoning. "It's not a bloody step forward when we go from 1 million dead to 200," said Sam Ung Bung-Ang, a spokesman for the Democratic Alliance. "Life is life, and one murder is too many."
Development statistics paint a picture of slow progress. A 2003 UN report said Cambodia is still ranked 130 of 173 countries on the Human Development Index. Other than Laos, Cambodia has the lowest life expectancy and literacy rates in the region, and the highest mortality rates for mothers and young children.
"With the economy now, state assets are war spoils, and what we call `corruption' . . . is simply [the government] running the country like a family business," said Sam Rainsy, the main opposition party leader. "If we continue like that, we will go down the drain."
Asked about the pace of Cambodia's development and human rights record under the current government, the government spokesman said more time and money were needed. (Cambodia receives about $500 million annually from foreign donors.) He also said Cambodia was being held to a higher standard of democracy than its neighbors.
"We don't have enough human resources," Khieu Kanharith said. "We've had a lot of assistance from donor countries. If you want to blame someone, blame them."
Many are now looking for the international community to increase the pressure on the government. Although some US senators have criticized the government, reaction from most foreign governments and development institutions, many of whom provide the funding for Cambodia to function, has been muted.
"Where is the outrage?" asked Cox, from the International Republican Institute.
Meanwhile, the political stalemate had delayed the convening of the long-awaited Khmer Rouge war-crimes tribunal. Government and opposition politicians say the tribunal would go forward once a government was formed.
©2004 Globe Newspaper Company
By Rafael D. Frankel, Globe Correspondent, 2/29/2004
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- On a recent trip to a village along the banks of the Mekong River, Kem Sokha brought along not only his trusted bodyguard but also a private American security specialist.
Kem Sokha is not a politician, a big businessman, or a diplomat, but a leader in Cambodia's fledgling human rights movement. And he believes his life is in danger.
The recent brazen killings of a prominent labor organizer, Chea Vichea, and several others affiliated with an opposition political group have heightened the sense of lawlessness in Cambodia, where murder is seen as a common political tool -- and the rich and powerful seem above the law.
The nation's police, judiciary, and elections institutions are controlled by the ruling party, led by Prime Minister Hun Sen, and many Cambodians and foreign aid workers have little confidence that justice can be served.
"I fear the killing fields in Cambodia are still open," said Kem Sokha, president of the Cambodia Center for Human Rights, referring to the place the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime would kill its victims of torture from 1975 to 1979.
Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge member who deserted the regime and joined the resistance, has maintained his grip on power in one form or another for nearly two decades through collaboration with Vietnam, military coups, and elections deemed by international observers as lacking "free and fair" standards.
The most recent elections, in July, saw the ruling Cambodian People's Party win a majority of seats in Parliament, but not the two-thirds required to form a government. Since then, a tense political drama has heated up between the CPP and the Democratic Alliance, made up of two opposition parties. Although both sides talk of reaching a settlement soon, the stalemate persists.
The government crisis has coincided with a wave of high-profile murders the past few months.
Chea Vichea, 36, who was affiliated with the opposition Sam Rainsy Party, was killed Jan. 22 in broad daylight in a driveby shooting in Phnom Penh. A radio journalist, a famous actress, and her mother -- all associated with the Democratic Alliance -- were gunned down in a similar fashion.
Human rights workers and opposition leaders have seized on what they called a questionable investigation into Chea Vichea's killing, saying it shows the history of impunity that has plagued Cambodia for decades is still prevalent. Two suspects are being held; one accused police of beating him to force a confession.
Accusations have been leveled by the opposition and democracy organizations that the killings were intended as a warning to opposition leaders to join the prime minister in a government.
A ruling-party spokesman, Khieu Kanharith, rejected any idea that the killings were ordered by members of his party. , saying the allegations were political ploys. "If we wanted to use violence, why wouldn't we have hit someone higher up in the party?" he said.
But outside of the government, the killings have raised alarms.
"They certainly appear to be politically motivated," said Jackson Cox, the Cambodia director of the International Republican Institute, an American organization that promotes democracy around the world. "The political situation here is tense, and members of the opposition, both high and low, are being murdered."
The recent killings have foreign relief workers and many Cambodian wondering whether Cambodia's development as a democracy has foundered after making great strides since the United Nations launched a $2 billion relief effort in 1992.
The government points out that Cambodia was rebuilding from total disaster. While many problems remain, the political situation is much less violent than in the past, Khieu Kanharith said.
The opposition rejects such reasoning. "It's not a bloody step forward when we go from 1 million dead to 200," said Sam Ung Bung-Ang, a spokesman for the Democratic Alliance. "Life is life, and one murder is too many."
Development statistics paint a picture of slow progress. A 2003 UN report said Cambodia is still ranked 130 of 173 countries on the Human Development Index. Other than Laos, Cambodia has the lowest life expectancy and literacy rates in the region, and the highest mortality rates for mothers and young children.
"With the economy now, state assets are war spoils, and what we call `corruption' . . . is simply [the government] running the country like a family business," said Sam Rainsy, the main opposition party leader. "If we continue like that, we will go down the drain."
Asked about the pace of Cambodia's development and human rights record under the current government, the government spokesman said more time and money were needed. (Cambodia receives about $500 million annually from foreign donors.) He also said Cambodia was being held to a higher standard of democracy than its neighbors.
"We don't have enough human resources," Khieu Kanharith said. "We've had a lot of assistance from donor countries. If you want to blame someone, blame them."
Many are now looking for the international community to increase the pressure on the government. Although some US senators have criticized the government, reaction from most foreign governments and development institutions, many of whom provide the funding for Cambodia to function, has been muted.
"Where is the outrage?" asked Cox, from the International Republican Institute.
Meanwhile, the political stalemate had delayed the convening of the long-awaited Khmer Rouge war-crimes tribunal. Government and opposition politicians say the tribunal would go forward once a government was formed.
©2004 Globe Newspaper Company
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
Concerns on bird kill compliance in rural Vietnam
All fowl targeted in battle against flu
By Jan McGirk and Rafael D. Frankel, Globe Correspondents, 2/3/2004
BANGKOK -- Hour after hour throughout the past week, the mass cull continued with systematic haste. Thai soldiers and prisoners marched into chicken coops in 29 provinces, wearing surgical masks and shower caps.
Rubber-gloved hands grabbed hens off their roosting spots, jammed the squawking birds into fertilizer sacks, and then flung them into deep pits. Dirt was dumped on top and doused with quicklime before the cullers left for the next farm infected with bird flu.
Grim newsclips of the army's assault on 14 million Thai chickens were broadcast all week.
Nimit Saengchan is in despair. All 19,000 birds at his farm in Bang Lane district were destroyed last week, and he had to lay off his six workers.
"Now I have to find another job myself," he said.
Saengchan said he has loans to pay off, and the government's compensation of $1 per culled chicken won't stretch far. Without the 10,000 eggs he used to sell every day, he said he has no means of livelihood.
Farmers and vendors are being hit hard as 10 Asian countries confront the virulent H5N1 strain of the bird flu that already has wiped out tens of millions of chickens and ducks. At least eight people have died in Vietnam and two in Thailand, but so far there have been no reports of person-to-person transmission, a development that could trigger a human influenza pandemic.
In Vietnam, where authorities say they are prepared to slaughter every fowl in the country, most farmers and poultry sellers in cities appear to be acquiescing to government orders to sell their products to the state -- which then destroys them -- at well below market value. But in the countryside, authorities say, some farmers are trying to hold out.
At a market in the Mekong Delta town of Long Xuyen on Saturday, a half-dozen government health inspectors combed the hundreds of stalls looking for chickens, ducks, eggs, and any poultry products they could find.
"We know people are still hiding chickens, but the number is reducing," said the lead inspector, Le Van Thang, pointing to baskets of fowl his inspectors confiscated that morning.
Despite the government's effort, chickens and ducks can be seen roaming free in the small farms that line the hundreds of canals and rivers criss-crossing the Delta.
"We are sending inspectors to the large farms, but we can't go everywhere," Le said.
The World Health Organization, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and the World Organization for Animal Health have all appealed to wealthy countries to compensate farmers across the region for their economic losses. Otherwise, specialists fear, cash-strapped farmers may sell tainted meat, which could infect kitchen workers and consumers.
Thailand's prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, has promised to suspend poultry farmers' debts for six months, although at least three months are needed for new chicks to mature enough to lay eggs.
Thaksin, a billionaire who once worked at a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise while attending college in Texas, is urging Thais to resume eating poultry. He pledged to pay surviving family members $75,000 if anyone died eating chicken cooked at a temperature above 168 degrees Fahrenheit. "When it's cooked, it's one million percent safe," he said in his weekly radio address.
Meanwhile, grief is galvanizing into anger and resignation. When all of one provincial farmer's hens were struck dead recently, according to media reports, she allegedly went berserk and started flinging their limp bodies onto other farms, apparently hoping that the flu would bankrupt her neighbors, too.
Many Thais think their leaders bungled the crisis by waiting too long to act, and they don't trust government authorities to protect them anymore, particularly after government spokesman Jakrapob Penkair admitted that a bureaucratic "screw-up" delayed eradication of bird flu in its early stages. The disease was mislabeled as fowl cholera, although some local veterinarians say they spotted avian influenza three months ago and were too intimidated to come forward with an inconvenient truth that would damage exports worth an annual $2 billion.
A sense of hopelessness pervades the market in Long Xuyen, Vietnam. Asked what he will do for money while the flu outbreak continues, vendor Do Huu Nghia, 40, said he will be jobless.
"I don't know how I will eat; I will be very poor," he said, dumping hundreds of his eggs into a basket government inspectors were waiting to collect.
Another poultry vendor threw up her hands as she listened to a government proclamation over a loudspeaker explaining the compensation vendors would receive for their products: While chickens usually sell for $2 each, and eggs for six cents, the government is only paying 75 cents in compensation for chickens and just over a penny apiece for eggs.
"Please tell the government we need help very badly," said the woman, who did not wish to be identified. "Please tell people to help us."
Farmers and vendors are not the only ones affected.
When the Thai capital was declared an epidemic center, traders at Chatuchak, Bangkok's biggest open-air market, raised a flap. The owners of an estimated 80,000 exotic birds -- ranging from fighting cocks to cockatoos and rare finches -- balked at killing them, although the law requires any stock within a three-mile radius of an infection zone to be destroyed. Authorities have granted a short reprieve to meet demands for a more selective cull that would spare birds issued health certifications by licensed veterinarians.
After officials at a quarantine checkpoint seized a champion rooster traveling to a cockfight, Bangkok's fighting cock breeders turned defiant. Rather than hand their prized birds over to be dispatched without dignity, the men slit the throats of 20 roosters at Chatuchak Market and tossed them into a soup pot. Then they slurped bowls of spicy Tom Yam Gai soup made from their birds.
Nikhom Apiratanakosol, head of the Fighting Cock Breeders' Club, complained that the government should have warned chicken owners about the epidemic.
"Officials let the disease spread widely and then ordered a sudden mass slaughter," he said.
McGirk reported from Bangkok; Frankel from Long Xuyen, Vietnam.
©2004 Globe Newspaper Company
By Jan McGirk and Rafael D. Frankel, Globe Correspondents, 2/3/2004
BANGKOK -- Hour after hour throughout the past week, the mass cull continued with systematic haste. Thai soldiers and prisoners marched into chicken coops in 29 provinces, wearing surgical masks and shower caps.
Rubber-gloved hands grabbed hens off their roosting spots, jammed the squawking birds into fertilizer sacks, and then flung them into deep pits. Dirt was dumped on top and doused with quicklime before the cullers left for the next farm infected with bird flu.
Grim newsclips of the army's assault on 14 million Thai chickens were broadcast all week.
Nimit Saengchan is in despair. All 19,000 birds at his farm in Bang Lane district were destroyed last week, and he had to lay off his six workers.
"Now I have to find another job myself," he said.
Saengchan said he has loans to pay off, and the government's compensation of $1 per culled chicken won't stretch far. Without the 10,000 eggs he used to sell every day, he said he has no means of livelihood.
Farmers and vendors are being hit hard as 10 Asian countries confront the virulent H5N1 strain of the bird flu that already has wiped out tens of millions of chickens and ducks. At least eight people have died in Vietnam and two in Thailand, but so far there have been no reports of person-to-person transmission, a development that could trigger a human influenza pandemic.
In Vietnam, where authorities say they are prepared to slaughter every fowl in the country, most farmers and poultry sellers in cities appear to be acquiescing to government orders to sell their products to the state -- which then destroys them -- at well below market value. But in the countryside, authorities say, some farmers are trying to hold out.
At a market in the Mekong Delta town of Long Xuyen on Saturday, a half-dozen government health inspectors combed the hundreds of stalls looking for chickens, ducks, eggs, and any poultry products they could find.
"We know people are still hiding chickens, but the number is reducing," said the lead inspector, Le Van Thang, pointing to baskets of fowl his inspectors confiscated that morning.
Despite the government's effort, chickens and ducks can be seen roaming free in the small farms that line the hundreds of canals and rivers criss-crossing the Delta.
"We are sending inspectors to the large farms, but we can't go everywhere," Le said.
The World Health Organization, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and the World Organization for Animal Health have all appealed to wealthy countries to compensate farmers across the region for their economic losses. Otherwise, specialists fear, cash-strapped farmers may sell tainted meat, which could infect kitchen workers and consumers.
Thailand's prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, has promised to suspend poultry farmers' debts for six months, although at least three months are needed for new chicks to mature enough to lay eggs.
Thaksin, a billionaire who once worked at a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise while attending college in Texas, is urging Thais to resume eating poultry. He pledged to pay surviving family members $75,000 if anyone died eating chicken cooked at a temperature above 168 degrees Fahrenheit. "When it's cooked, it's one million percent safe," he said in his weekly radio address.
Meanwhile, grief is galvanizing into anger and resignation. When all of one provincial farmer's hens were struck dead recently, according to media reports, she allegedly went berserk and started flinging their limp bodies onto other farms, apparently hoping that the flu would bankrupt her neighbors, too.
Many Thais think their leaders bungled the crisis by waiting too long to act, and they don't trust government authorities to protect them anymore, particularly after government spokesman Jakrapob Penkair admitted that a bureaucratic "screw-up" delayed eradication of bird flu in its early stages. The disease was mislabeled as fowl cholera, although some local veterinarians say they spotted avian influenza three months ago and were too intimidated to come forward with an inconvenient truth that would damage exports worth an annual $2 billion.
A sense of hopelessness pervades the market in Long Xuyen, Vietnam. Asked what he will do for money while the flu outbreak continues, vendor Do Huu Nghia, 40, said he will be jobless.
"I don't know how I will eat; I will be very poor," he said, dumping hundreds of his eggs into a basket government inspectors were waiting to collect.
Another poultry vendor threw up her hands as she listened to a government proclamation over a loudspeaker explaining the compensation vendors would receive for their products: While chickens usually sell for $2 each, and eggs for six cents, the government is only paying 75 cents in compensation for chickens and just over a penny apiece for eggs.
"Please tell the government we need help very badly," said the woman, who did not wish to be identified. "Please tell people to help us."
Farmers and vendors are not the only ones affected.
When the Thai capital was declared an epidemic center, traders at Chatuchak, Bangkok's biggest open-air market, raised a flap. The owners of an estimated 80,000 exotic birds -- ranging from fighting cocks to cockatoos and rare finches -- balked at killing them, although the law requires any stock within a three-mile radius of an infection zone to be destroyed. Authorities have granted a short reprieve to meet demands for a more selective cull that would spare birds issued health certifications by licensed veterinarians.
After officials at a quarantine checkpoint seized a champion rooster traveling to a cockfight, Bangkok's fighting cock breeders turned defiant. Rather than hand their prized birds over to be dispatched without dignity, the men slit the throats of 20 roosters at Chatuchak Market and tossed them into a soup pot. Then they slurped bowls of spicy Tom Yam Gai soup made from their birds.
Nikhom Apiratanakosol, head of the Fighting Cock Breeders' Club, complained that the government should have warned chicken owners about the epidemic.
"Officials let the disease spread widely and then ordered a sudden mass slaughter," he said.
McGirk reported from Bangkok; Frankel from Long Xuyen, Vietnam.
©2004 Globe Newspaper Company
Friday, January 23, 2004
Tet finds Vietnamese thinking of U.S. bounty, not battle
Published Jan. 23, 2004
By Rafael D. Frankel
Special to the Tribune
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam--Thirty-six years after the Tet offensive that broke U.S. resolve in the Vietnam War, young Vietnamese have put the bitter struggle in the past and embraced an America they see as a source of hope.
Interest in the U.S. was evident here Thursday as the year of the monkey began with Tet, as the Lunar New Year is called in Vietnam.
A midnight fireworks display exploded above more than 100,000 people along the Saigon River. Among the thousands of young people were dozens wearing American flag T-shirts. Coupled with the ubiquitous American-flag pillows and bandannas here in the former Saigon, signs point to more than a simple profusion of U.S. culture.
Though the government in Hanoi has cool but improving relations with Washington, the display of the Stars and Stripes is emblematic of the way most Vietnamese see the U.S. three decades after the war.
Thirty-six years ago, during the height of the Vietnam War, Tet took on a different dynamic. In the 1968 Tet offensive, the Viet Cong captured numerous South Vietnamese cities and even stormed the U.S. Embassy.
Though the Viet Cong suffered heavy casualties and eventually lost all the territorial gains, the offensive is seen as a turning point in the war, after which Americans at home lost the stomach for the carnage U.S. soldiers were suffering in the faraway Asian brush.
The Vietnam War killed more than 3 million Vietnamese, yet it does not evoke strong passions here, let alone hatred for an enemy who inflicted so much death and suffering.
Instead, many Vietnamese yearn to travel to the U.S., and they see it much the way Americans like their country to be seen: as a shining example of freedom, opportunity and wealth.
"My friends who have gone to the U.S. are very lucky," said Huynh Hoa, 26. "If my daughter [7 months old] can go there one day, maybe I would miss her, but it would be very lucky for her."
More than half the the nation's population is younger than 20. For them, the war is not even a memory but a collection of artifacts and photographs confined to the War Remnants Museum.
Their parents and grandparents rarely speak to them of those times, said Xi, 53, who would not give a family name, citing fear of the communist government.
"There is no time for that," she said. "We work hard every day, for money for our families. ... What happened then is not important now."
"I love America," said Xi. "I always think American people are the best."
©2004 The Chicago Tribune
By Rafael D. Frankel
Special to the Tribune
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam--Thirty-six years after the Tet offensive that broke U.S. resolve in the Vietnam War, young Vietnamese have put the bitter struggle in the past and embraced an America they see as a source of hope.
Interest in the U.S. was evident here Thursday as the year of the monkey began with Tet, as the Lunar New Year is called in Vietnam.
A midnight fireworks display exploded above more than 100,000 people along the Saigon River. Among the thousands of young people were dozens wearing American flag T-shirts. Coupled with the ubiquitous American-flag pillows and bandannas here in the former Saigon, signs point to more than a simple profusion of U.S. culture.
Though the government in Hanoi has cool but improving relations with Washington, the display of the Stars and Stripes is emblematic of the way most Vietnamese see the U.S. three decades after the war.
Thirty-six years ago, during the height of the Vietnam War, Tet took on a different dynamic. In the 1968 Tet offensive, the Viet Cong captured numerous South Vietnamese cities and even stormed the U.S. Embassy.
Though the Viet Cong suffered heavy casualties and eventually lost all the territorial gains, the offensive is seen as a turning point in the war, after which Americans at home lost the stomach for the carnage U.S. soldiers were suffering in the faraway Asian brush.
The Vietnam War killed more than 3 million Vietnamese, yet it does not evoke strong passions here, let alone hatred for an enemy who inflicted so much death and suffering.
Instead, many Vietnamese yearn to travel to the U.S., and they see it much the way Americans like their country to be seen: as a shining example of freedom, opportunity and wealth.
"My friends who have gone to the U.S. are very lucky," said Huynh Hoa, 26. "If my daughter [7 months old] can go there one day, maybe I would miss her, but it would be very lucky for her."
More than half the the nation's population is younger than 20. For them, the war is not even a memory but a collection of artifacts and photographs confined to the War Remnants Museum.
Their parents and grandparents rarely speak to them of those times, said Xi, 53, who would not give a family name, citing fear of the communist government.
"There is no time for that," she said. "We work hard every day, for money for our families. ... What happened then is not important now."
"I love America," said Xi. "I always think American people are the best."
©2004 The Chicago Tribune