Tsunami Leaves Women Vulnerable to Abuse

[Guest guest]

March 29, 2005: The tsunami that overwhelmed Asia in December killed

three times more women than men, and the resulting scarcity of

female survivors has led to reports of forced marriages and rape,

the British-based charity Oxfam International said Saturday.

 

Although official statistics do not provide the gender of victims,

partial data indicate that many more women than men were among the

300,000 people killed or declared missing after the Dec. 26 tsunami

devastated the coastlines of 11 countries around the Indian Ocean.

 

The impact on women was seen especially in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and

India.

 

Indonesia, the country hardest hit by the earthquake-generated

tsunami, now has villages where men now outnumber women 10-to-one.

 

"The tsunami has dealt a crushing blow to women and men across the

region. In some villages, it now appears that as many as 80 per cent

of those killed were women," said Becky Buel, Oxfam's policy

director. "This disproportionate impact will lead to problems for

years to come unless everyone working on the aid effort addresses

the issue now. We are already hearing about rapes, harassment and

forced early marriages."

 

The report concluded that women suffered disproportionately because

they had a more difficult time outrunning the surging waters or the

bad luck of being at home while the men were out at sea fishing or

in the fields working. As a result, men now far outnumber women in

crowded camps and scattered settlements, and the women are

vulnerable to a range of abuses, the report said.

 

Sri Lankan women reportedly have been sexually assaulted in camp

toilets and domestic violence is on the rise, the report found.

Indonesian women, according to Oxfam and women activists, are being

sexually harassed in camps, forced or rushed into marrying much

older men and victimized by abusive Indonesian soldiers, who

reportedly have strip-searched them.

 

"We know of at least three marriages in which women married older

widowers. What we don't know is how forced it was," said Ines Smyth,

gender adviser for Oxfam. "When we asked them, they say they have an

obligation to their family and were frightened for the future. If

you lost everything you had, including your family, it's very

difficult to refuse whatever is being offered, whether it's

protection or the possibility of a house."

 

Indonesian activists claim it is difficult to get women to talk

about the abuse or report it to authorities. The few women left in

coastal settlements interviewed said they were unaware of any abuse,

and they were focusing on rebuilding their lives.

 

The Aceh province's hard-hit coast is dotted with the remnants of

villages dominated by widowers. Lamsenia, a once-thriving fishing

and farming village of 833 on the west coast, now has only 35 women

among its 158 survivors, and all but one of those women have moved

elsewhere.

 

Gampong Pandee, on the edge of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh,

was reduced from 1,139 people to 246 - with only 20 women. Such

radical changes in a village's population will likely alter a

community for good, activists say, with men put in a difficult

position of leaving a village to restart a family or bringing

newcomers into what often was a very tight-knit community.

 

The tsunami also could adversely impact poor widowers in places like

Lamsenia. Most would like to remarry and start a new family, but

they have no money for the costly dowry and no immediate prospects

of resuming their jobs as rice farmers, traders or fishermen.

 

"What we need is women, but we also need money to get them," said

Mohammed Ali, a 50-year-old sand miner from Lamsenia whose wife and

five of his six children were killed in the tsunami. "We also need a

house. If we have a wife and no shelter, it means nothing."

 

Survivors in Lamsenia and Gampong Pandee say they mostly miss the

chatter and laughter of the women. There is no one to do the

cooking, the washing and, most of all, to keep them company at night.

 

For 26-year-old Indra Saputra, the tsunami was especially painful. A

day before it hit, he and his pregnant wife had celebrated their

wedding with a party for the entire village. Now, she is gone and

the prospects of doing it all over again are difficult to comprehend.

 

"I'll eventually get married because it's too traumatic to be

alone," he said. "For now, I have to get this village back to normal

and rebuild my home. But it's difficult because I've got no one to

share things with."

 

SOURCE: The Montreal Gazette. "December Outnumbered 10-1; Forced

marriages, domestic abuse, rapes are reported." By MICHAEL CASEY

(AP).

URL: http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/news/story.html?

id=2e34a4d7-b144-48ef-905c-c75c07eedf3a