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Prayers, tears mark tsunami anniversary
2006-12-26
With prayers and flowers and tears, from Thailand's beaches to the islands of India, mourners paid tribute to their loved ones on the second anniversary of the Asian tsunami. Emotional ceremonies across the region Tuesday recalled the day when giant waves killed 220,000 people in a sweep of devastation that washed entire villages away -- and left many that survived struggling to recover. "I lost my father and his wife and my brother two years ago," said Linda Sander, who had come from Sweden to join hundreds of mourners at Ban Nam Khem, a tiny fishing village in hard-hit Thailand. Some threw flowers out to sea as dawn broke, tears welling in their eyes. Others stood in silent remembrance of the 5,400 killed in the village, more than half of whom were tourists. "I feel strange," said Sander, who had booked a room in the same hotel as her doomed family. "I will attend every ceremony held today." Similar scenes were replayed around Asia, as people still grappled with the tragedy and destruction two years after one of the worst natural disasters ever recorded. With no comprehensive early-warning system in place, the waves -- rising up after a massive 9.3-magnitude undersea earthquake -- wreaked havoc in a matter of moments, to rip through schools, hospitals and hotels. "Since morning we are holding prayers and lighting candles to remember our loved ones," said Martin Luther of the Tribal Council of Car Nicobar, part of India's Andaman and Nicobar islands that were also badly hit by the tsunami. Residents held two minutes of silence for the dead -- about 3,500 people in the Andamans died or went missing -- as well as for the many children orphaned by the tragedy. In Indonesia's Aceh province, which suffered 168,000 dead, residents gathered in mosques for small private ceremonies. Aceh's commemorations were made even more sombre by fresh catastrophe -- the floods and landslides in recent days that have killed around 110 people and forced tens of thousands to flee. "I am sad that I have to leave home," said Nigia, a woman who had to abandon her house Saturday when flood waters submerged her house in the Aceh village of Arakundo. "I lost my cousin and many other family members during the tsunami," she said. On the Indonesian island of Bali, which escaped the 2004 catastrophe, some 15,000 schoolchildren and residents took part in a tsunami evacuation drill. In Sri Lanka, President Mahinda Rajapakse was to unveil a statue of Buddha in the southern town of Peraliya -- where nearly 1,000 people perished two years ago when their train was swept away by a wall of water. Outgoing UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the conflict between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil Tiger rebels was making the reconstruction effort "even more difficult". "No one could have prevented the tsunami's wave of destruction. But together we can stem the tide of conflict, which threatens once again to engulf the people of Sri Lanka," Annan said. Despite unprecedented pledges of aid from the international community in the weeks and months after disaster struck, rebuilding in some places has been slow. In Sri Lanka, only about half of the 100,000 damaged or destroyed homes have been rebuilt two years on. "God only knows if the money has been spent on tsunami victims or anybody else," said J. C. Weliamuna from the anti-corruption group Transparency International. A BBC report last week, citing UN figures, said several major donors had given little or none of the money that had been pledged -- around 6.7 billion dollars in all. The report said China had only delivered one million of the 301 million dollars it pledged to Sri Lanka, although the Chinese foreign ministry insisted Tuesday it had now made all its tsunami donations. Some places like Ban Nam Khem and the popular resort areas of Phuket in tourist-friendly Thailand have been rebuilt relatively quickly -- but the reconstruction has not reached everyone. Samaporn Petchkleang, 33, whose beachside family restaurant in Ban Nam Khem was levelled by the tsunami, had to take out a 100,000 baht (2,770 dollar) loan to rebuild her life. "The people that got the help -- most were fishermen, not the traders or shops," she said. "So most of the money we invested was our own," she told AFP. On nearby Khao Lak beach, many small hotels remain in ruins. And for many of the people who suffered through the tragedy, even gleaming new buildings and the cleaned-up beaches would not be enough to draw them back. Margit Vondaak, 42, from Germany, said her friend lost her young daughter and husband on Khao Lak beach two years ago. "My friend never came back here," she said. "She said she could not stand what happened here. It is too early for her."
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