The Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami devastated Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India, killing nearly 300,000 people.
The earthquake that caused the Indian Ocean tsunami took place on December 26, 2004, but the extent of the event and the scale of the devastation took days to comprehend. The quake was the third most powerful ever recorded, registering between 9.1 and 9.3 on the Richter scale, with its epicenter just west of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
Indonesia was hardest hit, followed by Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. Nearly 300,000 people died in 14 countries around the Indian Ocean from the flooding and devastation caused by the surge of water that reached 10 meters (33 feet) in some coastal areas.
The earthquake and tsunami were among the greatest natural catastrophes in recorded history. But the toll of death and destruction was not just the result of blind natural forces. As the WSWS emphasized in its coverage of the disasters, societal factors were central to the scale of the devastation. Man-made poverty, above all, was the primary cause of the loss of life.
The WSWS provided on-the-spot coverage as the people of the region began efforts to rescue survivors and recover the dead, particularly in Sri Lanka, where members of the Socialist Equality Party traveled to the eastern and southern coastal regions and reported on the efforts of thousands of volunteers, including many health care workers. There was also on-the-spot reporting in southern India.
The response of workers to the plight of other workers in need was striking. The tragedy cut across racial and religious differences and across national boundaries. In contrast to the generous response of ordinary people around the world regardless of racial and religious divisions, national governments either displayed apathy and indifference or used the disaster to pursue their own interests.
In Sri Lanka, President Chandrika Kumaratunga imposed military rule on 12 of the country’s 22 provinces.
In Indonesia, the military authorities sought to take advantage of the chaos caused by the quake and tidal wave to launch an offensive against separatist rebels in the province of Aceh, the northern tip of Sumatra. In Thailand, the government of billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra prioritized the lucrative tourist industry while neglecting poor fishing villages. The government of India blocked foreign aid to the low-lying Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where 80 percent of the population was rendered homeless, in an effort to demonstrate its standing as the dominant power in the region.
As for the imperialist powers, they offered only a pittance in aid, and even this was prompted by considerations of foreign policy and propaganda, not human solidarity. US Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed the hope that deploying US military assets in a predominately Muslim-populated region “dries up those pools of dissatisfaction that might give rise to terrorist activity.”
The Australian government of right-wing Prime Minister John Howard directed its aid efforts through a bilateral pact with the Indonesian regime of ex-general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The agreement provided that the bulk of the funds would go to Australian corporations.
The disaster was made worse by the fact that the Indian Ocean had no tsunami early warning system, in contrast to the Pacific, which has had one for 40 years. The need for such a system was well known and, as the WSWS noted, “The cost of establishing a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean is a pittance compared to the huge profits amassed by US, European and Japanese corporations through the exploitation of the region’s cheap labor.” The WSWS and the SEP in Sri Lanka and Australia held public meetings on both the causes and consequences of the tsunami and the political issues that it raised.
At a national membership meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on January 8-9, 2005, WSWS Editorial Board Chairman David North began a report, “Marxism, the International Committee and the science of perspective: an historical analysis of the crisis of American imperialism,” by noting the immense outpouring of empathy all over the world for the tragedy.
Referring to the empty comments in the media about the “inscrutability of nature's awful purpose,” as supposedly revealed in the tsunami disaster, North noted:
The impact of the tsunami exposes in an especially graphic manner the irrational nature of capitalism, its inability to develop the productive forces in a manner that raises the living standards of the broad masses of the people. The media enthuses about the “Asian miracle,” but the fact of the matter is that the benefits of the infusion of capital into the region over the past decade are showered upon small privileged elites. Hundreds of millions of Asia’s people live in shanties that, even under the most favorable climatic conditions, afford scant protection from the elements.
The 2004 tsunami was not simply a natural disaster but a graphic exposure of the failure of the capitalist system, the ruling classes and their governments to take the necessary steps to protect populations and assist the victims to recover and rebuild their lives.
December 26 marked the 10th anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami in which some 230,000 people lost their lives. We repost here a speech that was delivered by Wije Dias, the general secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in Sri Lanka, on February 4, 2005.
Five years after the 2004 tsunami, many survivors in Sri Lanka do not have proper housing, jobs and services, and poverty is still rampant.
A year has gone by since the December 26 tsunami devastated the coastal belts of 12 countries from north Sumatra in South East Asia to Somalia and Kenya on the west coast of Africa. But a man-made disaster of massive proportions continues to blight the lives of the millions of survivors who still languish in appalling conditions without proper shelter, jobs, health care or education facilities for their children.
A World Socialist Web Site reporting team recently visited the eastern Ampara district of Sri Lanka and spoke to survivors of the tsunami that devastated much of the coastal belt on December 26. According to local officials, about 25,000 people were killed and another 166,000 were left homeless in the district. Six months later, more than 40,000 victims are still living in inadequate accommodation with little or no government financial assistance.
The following commentary was submitted by World Socialist Web Site reader Christine Smith, a free-lance writer and social justice activist.
The following speech was delivered by Wije Dias, the general secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in Sri Lanka and a member of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, at a public meeting in Sydney on February 4 on the consequences of the Asian tsunami.
The $A1 billion “Australia-Indonesia Partnership for Reconstruction and Development” pact that Prime Minister John Howard announced with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Jakarta in early January was motivated by considerations that have nothing to do with humanitarianism. On the contrary, the Australian government has seized on the terrible impact of the Asian tsunami as the pretext for furthering its economic and strategic interests in Indonesia and throughout South East Asia.
The remote Andaman and Nicobar group suffered a devastating blow from the December 26 tsunami. The low-lying and mostly uninhabited chain of 572 islands in the Bay of Bengal was the closest Indian territory to the epicentre of the massive earthquake. As well as being swamped by the sea, it was hit by a series of substantial aftershocks.
The devastation caused by the Asian tsunami was not inevitable. On the contrary, it constitutes a powerful demonstration of the irrational and inhuman nature of the profit system. It is true that the immediate causes lay in forces of nature currently beyond the power of mankind to control. But it was entirely within the bounds of modern technology to prevent the vast majority of the suffering, death and damage that has occurred.
In the wake of the December 26 tsunami, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawarta has focused his government’s efforts on restoring the lucrative tourist industry, which contributes 6 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. The suffering of those who have lost friends and family members, together with the plight of villagers who have lost their homes and possessions, has been relegated to second place.
In an extraordinary move on January 3, Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga placed all relief efforts on the island under the control of the armed forces. The following day, in a decision that received no publicity, she imposed a state of emergency in the affected areas, providing the military with extensive powers.
During his whirlwind tour of the tsunami-devastated nations of South Asia, US Secretary of State Colin Powell let slip that the begrudging and belated funding offered by Washington to the ongoing relief effort is all part of its “global war on terror.”
The following is a selection of letters to the World Socialist Web Site on the South Asia tsunami disaster.
There are growing signs that the Indonesian military (TNI) is exploiting the current catastrophe in northern Sumatra to crush the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and establish its unchallenged control over the resource-rich province of Aceh.
The tsunami that killed over 140,000 people in southern Asia has taken at least 14,000 lives in India. Nine days after the catastrophe, Indian governments at the state and federal levels have yet to establish relief operations in a number of areas. This slow and inadequate response is now threatening thousands more lives as epidemics begin to emerge.
As the horrifying toll of death and destruction continues to mount in southern Asia, it becomes ever more obvious that lives could have been saved if a tsunami warning system had been in place. With just 15 to 30 minutes notice, and clear directives to flee, many people who had no idea what was happening, or how to react, could have escaped to safety.
As soon as the magnitude of the tsunami disaster became apparent, hundreds of Sri Lankan health workers, including doctors and nurses from Colombo’s National Hospital of Sri Lanka (NHSL) immediately volunteered for medical relief work. The offices of the director and matron of the NHSL accident service coordinated the effort, while the Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) and a group of nurses dispatched medical crews to affected areas. But they were working on their own initiative, largely without assistance or coordination from government authorities.
