Washington Report, August 2005, pages 40-41

Islam and the Near East in the Far East

Six Months After the Tsunami, Still Picking Up the Pieces in Aceh

By John Gee

	Acehnese women who opened a small laundry business to support their family three months after the December 26 tsunami work at the water’s edge in Banda Aceh (AFP Photo/Hiyawata).

MEN FAR outnumber women in many of the villages and towns of Aceh overwhelmed by the December 26 tsunami. A survey conducted by Flower Aceh, a local NGO, has revealed a startling disparity in the ratio between the sexes in the localities where it has been able to undertake research. In one extreme case, 750 men survived compared to 40 women, but in many other places, the ratio was two, three or more to one.

Suraiya Kamaruzzaman, one of the founders of Flower Aceh in 1989, considers that the social position of women may have much to do with their high casualty rate. As the traditional caregivers in the home, women attempted to save the lives of children and old people at the risk of their own lives. Many women were found dead with babies still clutched in their arms. Some personal accounts by survivors tell of mothers pushing their children to safety on buildings or trees that withstood the tsunami, but being swept away themselves. The long dresses women are obliged to wear under Aceh’s shariah laws made it harder for them to move quickly, argues Suraiya. They could not run as fast as men, nor swim. Some who were casually dressed in their homes when the first wave struck ran to put on outdoor clothes before seeking safety, and were drowned as a result or only barely escaped.

Because of the disparity in survival rates, many men now find themselves suddenly without anyone to cook or wash their clothes, as they were accustomed to have their wives do. A lot of men have motherless children to raise. They are often quite desperate to find new wives, and single women are under more pressure than ever before to marry. Some have been forced to wed against their will.

Suraiya described post-tsunami conditions in Aceh while visiting Singapore in May, as a guest of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. She told of how entire families perished. Suraiya herself lost 32 relatives in the disaster.

Flower Aceh’s staff managed to escape drowning by running to the second floor of a sturdy building close to their organization’s office, from where they saw the waters engulf it. The organization had studied the impact of local cultural practices and the armed conflict between the Indonesian army and the Free Aceh Movement upon Acehnese women: most of their quarter century of research was lost. So was the garden in which they had grown over 600 plants used in local traditional medicine.

Despite their own losses, Acehnese NGOs were quick to respond to the tsunami, trying to do what they could to alleviate conditions for their people. Some organized food aid or tried to reunite surviving members of families who had fled from the waves. In line with its previous orientation, Flower Aceh has worked with other women’s organizations to try to ensure that more consideration is given to the needs of women and children in the relief and reconstruction process. They established a women’s center to work in the camps in which hundreds of thousands of Acehnese had temporary refuge.

It was clear that coordinators of emergency and reconstruction aid from overseas often imagined that they were providing for women when they in fact were providing for their families: while they supplied cooking utensils and detergents, the women’s own needs, such as safety from harassment, privacy and requirements associated with menstruation or pregnancy, were neglected. Some of the clothing donated by foreign charities did not conform with the cultural norms of the traditional Muslim society of Aceh: short skirts and low-necked blouses have been left in unclaimed piles by people who did need clothes.

Acehnese NGOs have tried to promote more effective aid and reconstruction efforts. Among the tasks that Flower Aceh sees as necessary to undertake at present is the monitoring of the body set up by the Indonesian government to rehabilitate the devastated areas. It also wants to ensure that the property rights of women are respected during the process of settling claims to land in the areas where the tsunami swept away landmarks as well as records of ownership.

The Acehnese people have deeply appreciated foreign relief efforts, but they have not been passive recipients of aid, as many foreign news reports have suggested. Using what they could salvage from the debris of their former homes, as well as whatever other resources they had, they have tried to rebuild places to live and to find ways of providing for their families. Acehnese NGOs, given their familiarity with their own society and their extensive networks of contacts—depleted, but surviving—are playing a vital part in the reconstruction process.

Comings and Goings

Before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited Washington at the end of May, he traveled to Japan. His Japanese host, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, pledged around $100 million worth of aid in the immediate future, “bearing in mind Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in the near term.”

Official Japanese aid to the Palestinians since 1993 has amounted to $767 million, making Japan the third largest donor after the U.S. and European Union. Most of this aid has been contributed to U.N. agencies, rather than directly to the Palestinian Authority, but Tokyo indicated that it intended to increase its efforts to support the building of a self-sustaining Palestinian economy in the mid- to long-term future in furtherance of state-building efforts. This could suggest that Japan will increase the share of direct assistance to the PA within its aid to the Palestinians.

Two Southeast Asian leaders visited Palestine in May. Former Malaysian Premier Mahathir Mohamad said that he was delayed for over two hours at an Israeli checkpoint when he crossed from Jordan to the West Bank. He also was prevented from visiting the northern West Bank city of Jenin, where he had been due to open a school funded by Malaysia. He told Malaysian journalists, “Jenin is a place where the Israelis caused massive destruction and killed many Palestinians. That is why they prevented me from going there.”

When Mahathir then started to make plans to visit Jerusalem, he was told that he would not be allowed into the city for security reasons. Although he had informed the Palestinian Authority of his intentions, Mahathir had not directly approached the Israeli authorities for their permission to undertake the visits, as Malaysia does not recognize as legitimate Israel’s control over the territories that it occupied in 1967. While in the West Bank, he was shown around Ramallah by Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei.

Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong became the first Singaporean leader to visit the occupied Palestinian territories when he went to Ramallah on May 21. While there, he met Mahmoud Abbas and Foreign Minister Nasser al-Kidwa and laid a wreath on the tomb of Yasser Arafat. Goh had earlier had talks with Israeli leaders, but said that it was just as important to gain a deeper understanding of the Palestinian position, according to a May 23 Straits Times report of the visit (“SM Goh calls for balanced approach to M-E conflict”).

Goh stated, “I’ve said this publicly. And I’ve also told President George Bush, that in the handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the West, in particular the United States, must not come across as being in favor of only one side.

“They must recognize the importance of the Palestinians,” he explained, “and their desire for peace and statehood.”

What’s in a Name?

Choosing a good name for a company when it is being set up can pose problems. What sounds good in one language may be a term of abuse in an intended market, or describe something unappealing: “Pocari Sweat,” a Japanese soft drink, might not sound appetizing to potential U.S. buyers, for example.

An Israeli company that specializes in developing, producing and selling precision products for diamond processing was listed on the Singapore Exchange in March—the first Israeli company to be listed there. Its name is Sarin.

Sarin also happens to be the name of a nerve gas. It was used by members of the Aum Shinrikyo in their March 1995 attack on passengers in the Tokyo metro system, which killed 12 people and injured many more.