[Previous entry: "It's About Aid, and an Image"] [Next entry: "Iraq's Kurds Enjoy Self-Rule and Are Trying to Keep It"]

12/31/2004:

"Thai Tsunami Tourist Toll 2, 200 and Rising"

KHAO LAK, Thailand (Reuters) - The known toll of foreign tourists killed around Thailand's Khao Lak beach neared 2,000 and was still rising on Friday as Asia's tsunami catastrophe resonated beyond the Indian Ocean into European hearts.

...Environment Minister Suwit Khunkitti appealed for more refrigerated containers to store the thousands of bodies. ``Many firms are shutting down during this holiday season. Please send refrigerated containers or dry ice to help us store these decomposing bodies,'' Suwit told Bangkok radio while supervising the search on Khao Lak.

...The grounds of City Hall on the island -- one of Asia's premier beach resorts -- just south of Khao Lak are a gathering place for hundreds of people looking for loved ones.

Their biggest hope may be the forensic experts flown in from half a dozen countries who know they face a huge task in identifying the dead.

``It will be challenging,'' said Karl Kent, head of a 17-member forensic team from the Australian Federal Police of the kind sent to Bali in the wake of the 2002 bombings that killed 202 people.
Full Article:nytimes/reuters

Refrigerated trucks and forensic pathologists: in Banda Ace they are bulldozing the bodies into mass graves. The three major network news programs last night all featured a Swedish father reunited with his son. My daughter was 20 miles up the coast from Phuket, and only a stomach virus kept her from certain injury or even death that day. But all through the process of waiting to hear from her for three days that felt like a lifetime, it was impossible not to note the comparitive value of one American girl and the hundreds of thousands who lived there and are lost. Where were their forensic pathologists? Somehow grief and tragedy are not real to us in privilege unless they are ours. I suppose someone could argue that this is natural and human, but it's just the opposite. No one should be surprised at the US wrangling with the UN about who will be 'leading' the rescue efforts. For them, it's all about spin and their 'position in the world.' It is impossible for them to behave any differently at this point. Acting like it's some big sacrifice of mercy to scrape together a few paltry millions. How about cancelling the big inaguration bash and sending those millions. Unthinkable. Meanwhile, American media consumers have a heartstring-tugging distraction from the continuing disintegration of Iraq. It's entertainment. One of the 'upsides' to imperialism that is often noted is that in some peculiar way it united the world and made a global vision possible. Today we see the lie of that. This disaster shows that the West is only morally capable of seeing the world as it always has: as a theater for its efforts. The natives are merely objects of Western 'concern,' with its pity and mercy and charity. This is the best-case scenario. I suppose that compared to the Iraq theater this could be seen as an improvement. But the self-serving illusions are the same.