Human greed adds to survivors’ misery

BANDA ACEH - Fauziah is so busy fighting the profiteers she has not had time to dwell on the husband and seven children she lost in the tsunami that wiped out her home.

Dressed in a heavy brown dress and jilbab, covering everything but her face, the 37-year-old was at last approaching the front of a long queue of hundreds of people waiting for a 10kg bag of rice donated by Chinese Indonesian businessmen in Jakarta and Medan.

"The shops that are open are not selling any rice, or it has gone up so much in price I cannot afford it," she said.

"I don't know where to look, so I must line up here."

Fauziah and a niece standing in front - her sole surviving relative - are upset at the profiteering going on in Banda Aceh as the inevitable carpetbaggers look to cash in on the misery of a province where almost 100,000 people died.

Local people say prices have skyrocketed 100 per cent, with a sack of rice going up from 35,000 rupiah ($5.30) to at least 70,000 ($10.60) or more. The price of an Indonesian staple plate of rice and vegetables, known as nasi bungkus, has risen from 54c to $1.08.

Those are huge increases for ordinary people in what was already one of Indonesia's poorest provinces before the tragedy of a week ago - a place where many struggle to live on only a few dollars a day.

Across the road, Yanti, 24, lounges on a motorbike, also lamenting the fast-rising prices.

"In [the suburb of] Ulong Bata there are now warungs [street restaurants] opening up, but their prices have doubled or tripled and are very expensive."

At Banda Aceh's main airport, car owners lined up to rent their vehicles and services to foreign media or aid workers, charging as much as 900,000 rupiah, or about $136, a day. In many parts of Indonesia that would be a month's salary.

Thieves, rapists, kidnappers and hoaxers are preying on tsunami survivors and families of tourists and victims in Asian refugee camps and hospitals.

In stark contrast to a worldwide outpouring of humanitarian aid in response to the Boxing Day tsunami, a women's group in Sri Lanka said rapists were preying on homeless survivors.

"We have received reports of incidents of rape, gang rape, molestation and physical abuse of women and girls in the course of unsupervised rescue operations and while resident in temporary shelters," the Women and Media Collective group said.

Save the Children warned that youngsters orphaned by the tsunami were vulnerable to sexual exploitation. "The experience of earlier catastrophes is that children are especially exposed," said its Swedish chief, Charlotte Petri Gornitzka.

In Thailand thieves disguised as police and rescue workers have looted luggage and hotel safes around Khao Lak.

Hoax emails and websites to do with the tsunami have appeared in Britain, The United States, Hong Kong and Australia.

Swedish authorities said they were afraid to release the names of citizens missing lest their homes be burgled. "We have chosen, for sadly human reasons, to not publish such a list and say at this address in this town the Petersson family has been absent for a week," said Prime Minister Goeran Persson, explaining the decision not to release the names of more than 800 missing Swedes.

- AGENCIES