Criminal neglect in Nias

Indonesians on tiny Nias Island are suffering the brunt of another great earthquake, an “aftershock” of the even greater one last Dec. 26 that impelled a tsunami that killed 280,000 people in the Indian Ocean region. This one’s damage was apparently limited to Nias, as there was no major tidal wave.

Does that mean the emergency warning system that the U.S. and Japan, working with India, Sri Lanka, Indo nesia, Thailand and other nations of the Indian Ocean had set up in a hurry came through? What? You hadn’t heard that such a warning system was set up? That’s because it wasn’t. It should have been, but these powers had other priorities than the safety of the people.

The imperialist powers made a few additions to their Pacific Ocean warning system. Indian Ocean capitalist powers made a few steps toward increasing awareness. Japan and Hawaii knew who to call this time. But mainly the population, after December’s tragedy, was ready to evacuate to higher ground at any warning of a tsunami, even rumors. Many evacuated. And there was no tsunami.

All it showed was that even with a minimal warning system and popular awareness, many fewer people would have been casualties of last December’s tragedy.

According to the United Nations, there has been little movement toward setting up a general warning system for all the Indian Ocean nations on a similar basis to the one in the Pacific. Even local systems like the one planned by Thailand with German participation at a cost of $60 million—many Germans died on the tourist beaches of Phuket in December—is not expected to be fully in place until 2008. Nor has funding been promised either by the big imperialist powers or by regional powers.

Apparently none of the parties concerned is willing and ready on some sort of emergency basis to take the effort to save the people there.

Keep in mind that the costs of setting up a general warning system do not go beyond a few hundred million dollars. At the same time, Washington is selling two dozen advanced warplanes to Pakistan at the cost of billions—and with a subsidy of $1.3 billion in aid—while offering the same to India. Profits to the arms manufacturers and expanding geopolitical interests are a driving force far greater than the need for safety for the population.

The powerful aftershock—itself a world-class earthquake—underscores the same points Workers World analyst Fred Goldstein made in his articles following the Dec. 26 tsunami: Cuba’s highly developed system for handling natural disasters, which depends on the integrated work of many mass organizations, proves that socialism provides the best and most effective measures for coping with such emergencies, even when its access to high technology is constrained. The capitalists are only in it for the buck, and their role is, at best, criminal neglect.