Tsunami: One Year Later

A new impatience one year on

Jeremy Seabrook takes on the notion of western generosity one year after the Dec. 26 tsunami disaster

By Jeremy Seabrook
AsiaMedia Contributing Writer

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

There has been a lot of "one-year-on" media coverage of the aftermath of the tsunami. Perhaps the most significant comment was from a British hotel-owner in Phuket, who was reported as saying that some tourists now arriving in the resort are not even aware that the tsunami happened. This, he is supposed to have said, is "a good sign."

A good sign of what? Of the optimism of the human spirit? Of the capacity of a world with so many demands upon its compassion to forget? Of the ephemeral nature of human memory? Certainly not for those hundreds of people (originally to have been 10,000) from 40 countries the Thai government is flying to the country for a ceremony of remembrance.

But commemorative stories are no longer the main narrative. The tone has changed. The portrayal is not so much of the continuing torment of the victims, but has reverted to a familiar tale of corruption, diversion of funds by officials, bureaucrats, the military, NGOs, through whose sticky hands the generosity of western donors passes.

We are on back well-charted territory here. The goodness of the "international community," the giving of US$11 billion for the relief of the broken lives of tsunami survivors is characteristic of the humanitarianism of the rich world. But what can we do, if this is nullified by supine, venal and corrupt officialdom and bad governance in the affected countries?

This despair at "their" dishonesty, selfishness and greed has been given new impetus by the acrimonious rhetoric surrounding the WTO talks in Hong Kong. The West -- in spite of its flagrant self-interest over agricultural subsidies -- is at pains to give the impression that its earnest desire is to bring development, trade and well-being to the whole world. The reluctance of the developing countries to open their doors to Western banking, financial and insurance interests is presented as obduracy; this is symptomatic of "their" refusal to give in the "give-and-take" necessary in all negotiations.

One year on, and a new impatience is detectable. The "ganging up" of developing countries in Hong Kong is only one cause of the exasperation we feel at vast sums poured into the black hole of development, aid and relief, and siphoned off by dictators, officials and bureaucrats. Naturally, the West will strive to get on with what it does best; and that is the creation of wealth, since it is only by these means that the poor can hope to be lifted out of poverty. Poor people themselves have been demobilized in the war on poverty; this noble project is now in the hands of the (incorrupt) global administrators of international agencies and financial institutions.

Oxfam reported in December 2005 that barely one-fifth of the 1.8 million people made homeless by the tsunami have been re-housed, and that a further 308,000 houses are needed in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India.

Now in none of those countries is it regarded as the duty of government to provide houses for the people: the poor, by their ingenuity, labour and effort, house themselves. They create their own livelihoods. They are on their own. Charity is not going to supply houses to all those affected by disaster. In the rebuilding of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, only a small fraction of the poor blacks displaced are going to be able to afford to live in the reconstructed city. Who would expect an international community to provide free, or even cheap, housing to the dispossessed of South and East Asia, when the richest country in the world has seen a real-estate free market bonanza on the sites from which the poor were so brutally flushed by the waters of the Gulf in August 2005?

The western media -- which were generally content to remain silent during the long brutal rule of Suharto -- are now happy to report that Indonesia is among the most corrupt countries on earth. We read that governments everywhere have failed to allocate land for rebuilding. The people of Aceh were provided with shoddy fishing boats, of which the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates 40 percent were not seaworthy. In Aceh, tens of thousands of people are still living in tents and 100,000 in wooden barracks.

The Daily Telegraph expresses Western discontent more boldly: "The generosity of thousands of Britons who gave money to help victims of the tsunami is being betrayed by a Sri Lankan army of bureaucrats." The paper reported in May 2005 that 100,000 people were still living in the crudest shelters, that cartels of builders charging "United Nations" prices were inflating the costs of new structures. The Prime Minister of Sri Lanka is alleged to have appropriated US$819,000 dollars of aid. The military in Aceh was reported to be levying a tax on every truck bringing supplies. In Tamil Nadu, local government officials are said to be taking a cut of compensation payments, while contracts are given disproportionately to construction companies allied with the ruling party.

It seems our charity is dependent upon the people of South and Southeast Asia meekly reaffirming their ancient status as victims: the begging-bowl and the hands outstretched in supplication. But a new assertiveness in the developing world, especially the rise of China and India, has upset all this. The "poaching" of industrial jobs by China and of service-sector work by India is only the beginning. The solidarity of the developing world in Hong Kong this week -- "four-fifths of humanity" -- exacerbates the sense of ingratitude. We must expect to see more abuse heaped upon developing countries for their intransigence, their refusal to play the game of an interdependent world, when that interdependence is based so firmly on rules of dominance and subordination.

Global inequality has reached such extremes that even the myth of universal wealth-creation is perhaps at the end of its useful life, and poor people are taking back into their own hands responsibility for the relief of their own destitution -- South Korean farmers, the poor of Venezuela, even the doomed Maoists of Nepal. Could it be that our humanitarianism, our charitable impulses, our eager desire to share (not our wealth, but the secrets of our wealth-creation) with the whole world is being seen as an historic hoax?

One consequence of the tsunami has been to define more sharply the relationship between "developed" and "developing" countries. No doubt corruption, lack of transparency and pecuniary malpractice are common in South and Southeast Asia; but this is small beer compared to the institutionalized corruption of global injustice, which ensures the distribution of the abundance of the world becomes less fair with every passing year.

The views expressed above are those of the author and are not necessarily those of AsiaMedia or the UCLA Asia Institute.

Date Posted: 12/20/2005