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Featured Stories

PEOPLE POWER
The Paradox of Freedom: People Power in the Information Age
by David Celdran
When public space migrates to the airwaves and the news pages, politics risks degenerating into a spectator sport.

ELECTIONS 2004
Lanao’s Dirty Secrets
by Sheila S. Coronel
What really happened in Lanao del Sur in 2004 that prompted the attempts to silence Brig. Gen. Gudani?

10 Reasons to Doubt the 2004 Election Results
by Yvonne T. Chua and Avigail M. Olarte
The numbers don’t alays add up, and that’s just one reason why last year’s elections are so controversial.

THE FUTURE OF ELECTIONS
Can Comelec Reform?
by Alecks P. Pabico
Despite being hounded by controversy, the elections body is resisting change.

REFORMS IN THE BARRACKS
The Officers Who Say No
by Luz Rimban
Military and police officers believe reforming the system begins with reforming the individual.

JOURNALIST AT RISK
Reporting under the Gun
by Vinia M. Datinguinoo
Mei Magsino escaped the wrath of the alleged jueteng lord who is also Batangas governor.

THE METROPOLIS
Battle of the Billboards
by Charlene Dy
They’re big, bold, and not quite beautiful. They can also be a health and environmental hazard, but so far, no one is policing billboards.

WOMEN AND DISASTER
Resilience Amid Ruin
by Tess Bacalla
Many more women than men died in the Aceh tsunami. Today the women survivors wrestle with disaster relief programs that don’t consider special needs.

YOUTH VOLUNTEERS
A Gift of Self
Young people discover life’s meaning by doing volunteer work.

SPECIAL ON PINOY POLITICAL HUMOR
Impersonating Presidents
by Elvira Mata
This is a coutnry where there's always someone spoofing a president — dead or alive — on TV, during cocnerts, and from time to time, at people power marches. Five actors top the list of the country's best impersonators.

La Vida Doble
by Tony Velazquez
Because Philippine politics is so ridiculous, amateur impersonators are having a feast.

Mobile Clowning
by Sheila S. Coronel
The cellphone has only encouraged the Pinoy propensity for jokes.

Where Has All the Laughter Gone?
by Katrina Stuart Santiago
Websites and blogs have provided an outlet for political humor, but not all of them are funny.

Many more women than men died in the Aceh tsunami. Today the women survivors wrestle with disaster relief programs that don't consider their special needs.

by TESS BACALLA

	SURVIVING THE TSUNAMI. Most of the victims of the tidal wave that killed tens of thousands in the Indonesian province of Aceh in December 2004 were women.

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Rahmi is about 14, but has already lost the world she knew. One can see it in her sad, soulful eyes, and in her inability to smile. And the reason is evident just by surveying what surrounds her here in this northwestern Sumatran city. Nearly a year after the powerful Dec. 26 earthquake struck and triggered tsunamis in several parts of Asia, this once bustling coastal city remains desolate. In many areas, piles of rubble are the only proof that there were once houses and buildings there while in others, muddy boats scattered willy-nilly far from the shore show just how strong the waves that swept into Banda Aceh were. There are also places where the stench of death still hangs in the air, even as a few men sort through the debris.

Save for a younger brother, Rahmi is all that is left of her family. She doesn't know it yet, but Aceh's female population in particular has been just as decimated. In fact, the tsunami didn't just flatten this provincial capital and almost erased it from the map. It also altered the demographics of a place that was already a man's world to begin with, and may have paved the way for a hard future for Rahmi, a life that will be more difficult than what her mother or grandmother had experienced.

The total death toll from the tsunamis that swamped coastal communities in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, India, and seven other countries was 220,000. Based on the Indonesia National Disaster Coordinating Board or NDCB, more than half of those deaths were from Aceh. Excluded in these figures, however, are the missing, which may be far more than the fatalities.

In many areas, including Aceh, most of the missing or dead are women. In five villages in Aceh's Lampu'uk subdistrict, the women's group Flower Aceh says only 40 of the 750 survivors from a population of 5,500 are women. Other local nongovernmental organizations and international aid groups have found similar statistics in other tsunami-affected communities in the province. The international relief group Oxfam says that in four villages in Aceh Besar district, male survivors outnumber the females by a ratio of three to one. In four villages in North Aceh, the female death toll made up 70 percent of the fatalities. In Kuala Cangkoy, 80 percent of the dead were female.

Not surprisingly, men outnumber the women in the camps and barracks set up for "internally displaced people" or IDPs. International and local NGOs, as well as U.N. agencies, worry that if what is happening in these camps and barracks is any indication, the Acehnese women and girls who survived the deadly waves should brace themselves for what can lie ahead.

HEAVIER BURDENS, HEIGHTENED RISKS OF ABUSE
As in other Asian societies, women are the traditional caregivers in Aceh, and perform the household chores. They still perform such tasks in the camps, but these days their burden has become heavier because of the sheer number of men and children they are expected to serve and look after. Before the tsunami, each Acehnese household could probably count on more than a pair of female hands to do the chores. Today not only is that no longer true, women and girls are expected to help men who are not their relatives, if only because Acehnese males are "embarrassed to be seen doing housework," says Tesmiati Emsa, who heads a women's NGO based here. Another relief worker says some widowers left with children to look after simply could not cope with the idea of becoming caregivers even to their own offspring that they readily gave these up to an orphanage.

Meanwhile, NGOs and international aid agencies say many of the women have been subjected to sexual harassment and abuse, while some have found themselves becoming victims of physical violence wielded by bored or frustrated men. Erwin Setiawan of Flower Aceh says men are lashing out partly because of the stressful conditions in the barracks where there is a lack of privacy and where they are unable to practice their usual means of livelihood. But he offers no explanation why women, who are enduring the same conditions, are not reacting in the same way and instead are made to bear the brunt of the men's pent-up emotions.

In fact, life in the camps and the barracks is even more stressful for the women because, say several observers, their needs were not taken into consideration in designing these temporary shelters. For instance, there are no separate toilets for men and women. Many of the toilets have no roofs or are made from just plastic sheets or sacks, through which peepholes could easily be cut.

"I heard a lot of cases of men peeping while women were taking a bath in their temporary shelters," says MB Wijaksana, editor in chief of Journal Perempuan, a Jakarta-based women's magazine. He says he tried to check with the police if they were aware of these cases, which he describes as forms of sexual harassment, and found that the authorities had somehow managed to escape hearing about them.

Personal supplies such as underwear and sanitary napkins have also apparently been excluded from the list of basic needs provided in the shelters. The lack of supply of long-sleeved shirts and headscarves — essential to Acehnese women, who are predominantly Muslim like the majority of Indonesians — has remained unchecked. In a press statement, the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) observed that in the face of such unmet needs, "women and girls become reluctant to carry out public activities and even access basic needs and humanitarian assistance."

As if they didn't have enough problems, the women in the shelters have also had to put up with the lack of clean water, which means they are usually forced to fetch some elsewhere and lug it back to their quarters. But according to UNFPA information officer in Indonesia Maria Hulupi, some barracks are in areas that make it dangerous for women to venture outside. As it is, the crowded, maledominated environment has meant that women and girls have had to put up with being constantly teased and stared at.