Rebuilding Aceh five years on
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Tim Hume reported from Banda Aceh in the aftermath of the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The senior reporter with the Sunday Star Times returned to Indonesia in late 2009 on an Asia:NZ media travel grant. He takes stock of the rebuilding process five years on.
Five years ago, I spent four days in the Indonesian city of Banda Aceh, and got a small, unforgettable glimpse of the hell of one of history’s worst natural disasters. The province of Aceh – already suffering from three decades of civil war between separatist guerrillas and the Indonesian government – was the region worst affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami which struck on Boxing Day, 2004, killing as many as 170,000 people there.
The destruction was of near apocalyptic proportions. Scenes of the tsunami’s aftermath - of hundreds of thousands of despairing survivors, sheltering on an obliterated landscape - stuck with me. I wondered what would become of Aceh, how it would even begin to go about recovering psychologically from such trauma. Revisiting the province a year later, as a guest of Unicef, I observed some of the physical recovery that had taken place up to that point – itself an incredible achievement of logistics and humanitarian goodwill. But in the longer term, on a deeper level, the question remained: what emotional scars had the wave left behind? How would Aceh’s suffering manifest itself in the society that survived?
The Asia New Zealand Foundation media travel grant allowed me to return, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the disaster, and attempt to answer those questions. What I found surprised me. In today’s Banda Aceh, there are few traces of the city’s painful recent history. I was amazed by the extent to which Acehnese society had recovered from the disaster, by the resilience of the survivors in the face of their unbearable losses. In this most devoutly Islamic province, people did not seem haunted. By and large, the tsunami was seen as an act of God: a trial to be endured, and not questioned.
The phenomenal outpouring of global charity towards tsunami survivors, and the peace deal which had been struck between secessionist rebels and the Indonesian government in the political opening left by the disaster, had allowed the Acehnese to rebuild a stronger, more open society than existed before (even factoring into account the sharia restrictions in the province). Aceh’s progressive new governor – a former secessionist guerrilla leader and political prisoner, who had to escape rising floodwaters in his jail cell when the tsunami struck – had a strong ecological vision for the future of his homeland, which was pinning its hopes on developing a post-war tourist industry as an economic lifeline.
I spent about a week in Banda Aceh, interviewing dozens of sources from a range of backgrounds: survivors, humanitarian workers, politicians, community leaders, tourism operators. Several contacts I made before leaving New Zealand proved invaluable. Asia:NZ put me in touch with Tabrani Yunis, who heads a women’s rights organisation in Banda Aceh, and had a harrowing and insightful account of the disaster and its aftermath, having lost both his wife and two young children in the tragedy.
David Shirley is a young New Zealander who manages Banda Aceh’s top hotel, and has strong connections across the spectrum of Acehnese society. He hosted me, guided me around the city, and secured me interviews with key political figures with whom it would otherwise be difficult to get an audience. A hard-won 15-minute interview at the Governor’s office which was scheduled through Shirley’s efforts yielded much more than initially promised, stretching into a lengthy, candid interview over lunch at his home.
New Zealander Bob McKerrow, the head of the Red Cross in Indonesia and a veteran of nearly four decades in the humanitarian sector, also proved a knowledgeable and invaluable contact. Our initial interview also took an unexpected twist when it was interrupted by the disturbing news that one of his colleagues – the head of Germany’s Red Cross delegation in Indonesia - had been shot by unknown assailants on motorcycles outside a Banda Aceh hotel. I wrote a story on the shooting for stuff.co.nz, and later that week filed an exclusive report on the Governor’s frank assessment of the attack, which ran in the Star Times’ World section. The victim of the shooting survived, after being airlifted to Singapore for medical treatment; McKerrow and I resumed our interview in Jakarta, a week later.
My feature article on Aceh’s rebirth ran as the cover story of the Star Times’ Focus section on the Sunday before the fifth year anniversary of the disaster. The report was republished in the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne’s The Age on Boxing Day.
From Banda Aceh, I travelled to the scene of a more recent disaster: the stricken Sumatran city of Padang, where more than 1000 people were killed in a 7.6 magnitude earthquake only a month earlier. I visited affected areas, spoke to survivors, and was guided around relief projects by Unicef and Red Cross staff. The situation they were facing was dire: monsoon rains had begun, making conditions untenable for those made homeless by the quake, and placing many affected communities in mountainous areas at further risk of landslides. Critically, the Padang earthquake had become something of a forgotten catastrophe, receiving limited coverage in the world’s media, as it had occurred at the same time as several other natural disasters in the region. The resulting “donor fatigue” meant that international humanitarian organisations were facing a serious shortfall of funds to adequately address the crisis – about a third of what they needed to shelter the thousands survivors made homeless by the quake. My report on the crisis in Padang ran in the Star Times’ world pages.
Returning through Jakarta, I stopped off to report on another story I had become aware of through a contact made during my Indonesian trip: the unusual case of New Zealander Rob McNeice, who had spent 15 months in jail awaiting extradition to Australia on fraud charges. I spent about two hours with McNeice in his cell in the prison wing of Jakarta’s national police headquarters, seeing firsthand his living conditions and untangling the story of how the extradition process had stalled so hopelessly in his case. I visited the Indonesia’s National Commission on Human Rights to interview lawyers advocating on McNeice’s behalf, and then the South Jakarta District Court, alongside commission delegates, to clarify the murky legal status of his ongoing detention. I also spoke to a number of Indonesian ministries in an attempt to get answers as to where and how his case had become lost in the system. The resulting story ran in the Star-Times’ news section and can be accessed here.
My two weeks in Indonesia felt like much longer. There was so much packed in. The country is a world unto itself, teeming with life and people and stories; it has also born far more than its share of tragedy of late. I am grateful to Asia:NZ for the professionally rewarding opportunities provided by their support, which allowed me to get over there, engage with what is happening, and get stories before the New Zealand public which would otherwise not be written. On my last night I caught up with a group of foreign journalists, including a number of New Zealanders, working in Jakarta’s press. I told them I envied them, working as journalists in a country where you were exposed to so much of the human experience, a place where it seems a reporter can just trip over a story.
Read Tim's Star-Times articles:
'Paranoia' drove Red Cross shooting - 8 November 2009
Outcry over Kiwi's lengthy Jakarta jailing - 15 November 2009
Five years on: Aceh's clean slate - 27 December 2009
Photos:
1. Children in Padang, attending classes in tents, as their classrooms were damaged by the earthquake.
2. A 2600-tonne floating electricity generator, which was dumped by the wave in the middle of a village 5km inland.
3. A tent provided by Unicef where children in Padang are receiving lessons.
4. A collapsed building in Padang, Sumatra, struck by a 7.6-magnitude earthquake on September 30, 2009, which took more than 1000 lives.
5. Aceh Governor Yusuf speaks with a beggar on the steps of Banda Aceh’s Grand Mosque.
6. Cows on the beach at Lhok Nga, one of the areas most heavily hit by the tsunami.
This page was published on 27 January 2010
