Henri, ein guter Freund lebt und arbeitet seit mehr als zwei Jahren in Yogyakarta, Indonesien. Als das Erdbeben vor wenigen Tagen die Region traf, war er gerade nicht dort – sondern in Dili, der Hauptstadt des gerade von Unruhen heimgesuchten Ost-Timor. Inzwischen ist er wieder daheim, sein Häuschen am Rande von Yogya steht noch, ist zur Zeit aber mit 4 Familien belegt (Voriges Jahr habe ich ihn dort besucht – es ist ziemlich hübsch und bietet einen – jetzt wohl eher beunruhigenden – Blick auf den Merapi …)
Henri arbeitet für die indonesische NGO Insist, die sich sowohl im Erdbebengebiet als auch – soweit möglich – in Ost-Timor engagiert. Er bat um Spenden und ich habe dieser Bitte gern entsprochen. Ich hatte ohnehin vor, etwas zu spenden und habe so die Möglichkeit, aus erster Hand zu erfahren, wofür die zusammengesammelten Gelder verwendet werden. Und zwar ungeschminkt, ohne dass Probleme verschwiegen und Erfolge aufgebläht werden.
Ich habe seine Email angehängt (ich hoffe, das ist okay, Henri!), vielleicht hat ja noch jemand ein paar Euro übrig.
dear friends, my apologies for sending out mass e-mails only recently, i have not really had the time and space for more personal e-mails. so its been an intense two weeks or so here, first with the violence in east timor and now the earthquake relief effort in yogyakarta. as you might have guessed by now, i am approaching you for funds to support the victims of those two catastrophes, one man-made and the other natural. i am not sure yet as to what kind of support could be provided in timor (see also situation update below) but it would basically be humanitarian support for the displaced people and longer term reconciliation and reconstruction work. here in yogyakarta it is already fairly clear. insist, the indonesian organisation i work with, has set up an emergency team and we are working in about 30 villages at the moment. for now, we are providing emergency relief until the end of the month, then after a transitional phase we will concentrate on community-based reconstruction. though that plan may change if circumstances change. if you want more details, please do not hesitate to contact me. the easiest way that you can support is us is of course financially. as with the tsunami, the easiest is probably if you transfer money to either my account in finland or germany:(Anmerkung von Volker: Der Konto-Inhaber ist Henri Myrttinen)finland: account number 660100-1625813, alandsbanken tampere germany: account number 117056317, sparkasse koeln-bonn, blz 38050000 or if you are in indonesia, you can also transfer it directly to insist's sister organisation ypri in yogya: bank niaga jl sudirman, yogyakarta rekening 018.01.00094.17.3 a/n ypri (yayasan pendidikan rakyat indonesia) i will of course report to you on the use of the money and unless you object, i would propose to use half for timor and half for yogya. or, equally well, you can support a worthy cause in your neighbourhood, as yogya and timor are not the only places where people are in need. as for the situation here in yogya, the relief effort has gotten under way fairly quickly. what is becoming evident though is that the initial damage estimates were too conservative, the number of damaged houses looks to be much greater than initially expected. thus the number of casualities that need to be treated and the number of homeless also looks to be higher than initially expected. help has been flowing in but it can of course never be fast enough. an extra effort is being made to reach the more unaccessible areas. many victims and many relief workers complain about delays, confusion and bureaucracy in the aid distribution but to be fair some of this is inevitable. for example, with corruption unfortuantely still being a major issue in indonesia, there needs to be a 'paper trail' to ensure that aid gets to where it should get to in a transparent manner. however, the paper work that this entails can quickly become a burden and in itself become a very intransparent process of getting signatures here, stamps there, sending duplicate copies to another person... but in general, it seems to be going moderately well for now, though that is of course a very relative term given the scale of destruction. but the condition for this is that there is continued support. yogya has been experiencing a number of aftershocks and one danger thats literally on the horizon is mount merapi, which has been increasingly active for the past month now and the earthquakes have pushed up more lava. a major eruption and the ensuing humanitarian disaster could be catastrophic at worst, or at the very least put an immense strain on the support and aid infrastructure here. there not much one can do about it, apart from hoping that the traditional javanese ceremonies being carried out to appease the spirits of the mountain do have some effect. the continued aftershocks are wearing down people's nerves, with any major aftershock sending people out of their houses. (personally, i have yet to notice any aftershock, though. those of you that have called me insensitive in the past may thus have a valid point, though i would use my creeping sense of a nervous breakdown that a share with many people here as a counter-argument) on a more positive note, the traditional javanese communal support system has sprung into action at least in those areas where there is no overwhelming level of destruction. in the village i live in, for example, communal reconstruction of damaged houses began immediately as a joint effort without waiting for outside help. so while yogya is recuperating, dili is still burning. i have been trying unsuccessfully to reach my friends there by phone but from what i gather the situation remains more or less the same as when i left last week. the communal violence continues, with a major incident taking place in comoro market yesterday. the estimate of internally displaced people is now somewhere at 100 000, which is about 12-15 % of the whole country's population. their situation remains precarious. i am not sure about how much humanitarian aid is coming in but the physical security of these internal refugees is apparently becoming a serious issue. there are reports of armed gangs infiltrating the refugee 'camps,' though camp is a fairly luxurious term for the makeshift congregations of tarps and mattresses that serve as shelters for many of these people. unhcr has started flying in tents now, though. the timorese politcal leadership is, it seems, in a continued state of near-paralysis, with the president, foreign minister and prime minister bickering over who should control the army and police - though to be honest there isnt really much of an army or police to control anymore. but its not only the timorese who are bickering: in a twist that would be funny if the consequences were not so serious, the portuguese peacekeepers have announced that they refuse to operate under a joint, australian-led command with the other peacekeepers. so the mess is becoming even messier and there have been rumours/unconfirmed reports of the violence now spreading out of dili into the countryside. the peacekeepers are unable to achieve anything more than creating spatially and temporally limited pockets of relative calm. but so much for now, time for me to get back to trying to do something about these problems instead of just fretting about them. take care, stay safe and please do keep on mailing even if i dont have a chance to get back to you straight away. cheers,henri
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