Christmas tinged with sadness in tsunami zone
Christmas celebrations were muted today in regions struck by the Indian Ocean tsunami 364 days ago, as mourners mixed with revellers on beaches where some of the hundreds of thousands of victims died.
Western tourists who survived the killer waves and relatives of some of those who did not were among those at Thailand’s famous beach resort district around Phuket island, which was battered by the disaster last December 26.
Many will attend commemoration ceremonies tomorrow.
In Aceh, the Indonesian province hardest-hit, aid workers joined more than 100 people from the small Christian community at an 18th century Catholic church that still bears deep cracks in the walls from the massive earthquake that spawned the disaster.
“It’s not as cheerful as normal, because we’re still remembering our friends and family who died,” Santiani Saraghi, 47, whose house was swamped by the tsunami’s surging waters, said after the service.
In Thailand, Christian missionaries went house to rebuilt house in Na Khem village on Christmas Eve singing carols and handing out practical household gifts, such as washing tubs, ironing boards and umbrellas.
“Still today, one year after, you meet people and they’re still suffering almost like the first week,” Elke Hain, 41, a German missionary who has lived in Thailand for six years. “They have tears in their eyes when they tell you their stories … They can’t sleep, they have anxiety attacks.”
Sigi and Silvia Gsteu of Feldkirch, Austria, returned to Thailand to honour a promise made to friends who died in the tsunami.
A year ago, Silvia Gsteu was recalled from holiday by work, and the couple vowed to make it up to the travelling companions they left behind by returning this year and baking a special apple strudel for a Christmas feast.
The tsunami swamped the bungalows where the group was staying, killing three of the couple’s closest friends.
“Many people said to us, the best help you can give is to come back for holidays,” Sigi Gsteu said. But, “We will not stay on the sea.”
At one Catholic midnight Mass in a hotels along Patong beach, the priest urged attendees to “remember all those who lost their lives in the tsunami”.
Outside, revellers partied with bar staff dressed in Christmas hats in the beach’s notorious nightclub district.
In India, more than 300 people attended an interfaith service of Hindu, Christian and Muslim prayers on Sunday before joining a march led by children dressed in white through Nagapattinam, where thousands were washed away.
“Our purpose is to express solidarity with the survivors and pledge ourselves to rebuild Nagapattinam,” said S. P. Rajendran, secretary of the town’s Chamber of Commerce and an organiser of the march.
On the anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami that left at least 216,000 people dead or missing, survivors and officials are taking stock of the relief operation and peace drives in Sri Lanka and Aceh, the two hardest hit places. Success has been mixed.
In Aceh, the tsunami resulted in a cease-fire between the government and guerillas that has ended a decades-old separatist conflict.
No such progress was made in Sri Lanka, where disputes over tsunami aid and an upsurge in violence have dashed hopes for an end to the country’s long-running civil conflict.
Exactly one year ago on Monday, a massive magnitude-9 earthquake ripped apart the ocean floor off Sumatra island, sending giant waves crashing into the coastlines of one dozen countries from Malaysia to east Africa.
At least 216,000 people were killed or disappeared in the waves, according to an assessment by The Associated Press of government and credible relief agency figures for each country hit – though the United Nations puts the number at least 223,000.
The true toll will probably never be known – many bodies were lost at sea and in some cases the populations of places struck were not accurately recorded.
Almost 400,000 houses were reduced to rubble and more than two million people left homeless, the UN says.
Rebuilding, funded by massive aid donations, has started but many refugee camps remain full and many agencies worry that the pace of reconstruction in too slow.
