They Met with Aid Groups, Peace Process Monitors, and Villagers Whose Homes Were Destroyed Last Year
Global Exchange www.globalexchange.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 25, 2005
CONTACT: Judy Dushku, 617-573-8129, jdushku@suffolk.edu Michael Renner, 631-369-6896, mrenner@optonline.net
Andrea Buffa, Global Exchange, 510-325-3653
New York -- A New York researcher and a Boston academic have just returned from Aceh, Indonesia, and are available for interviews on the December 26th one-year anniversary of the tsunami that devastated areas of Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka and several other countries, and left more than 231,000 people dead or missing. They spent the last ten days in Aceh, Indonesia, the area most severely impacted by the tsunami, to evaluate reconstruction efforts and better understand the situation of the Acehnese people one year after the catastrophe.
Michael Renner of New York and Judy Dushku of Boston were part of a delegation of US and Southeast Asian advocates, researchers and academics who traveled to Aceh in mid-December and met with local and foreign aid groups, including the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), Oxfam among others. They visited several villages destroyed by the tsunami and barracks where villagers are still housed, despite billions of dollars of reconstruction aid that were pledged to help them rebuild their lives.
The delegates also met with groups that are monitoring a peace process that has been under way in Aceh for almost a year. "One of the things about the tsunami that's important to acknowledge is that while it was a terrible thing, it also opened up Aceh to the outside world, so that people could appreciate the difficult political and social conditions that existed there before the tsunami ever broke out," Dushku said. "We talked with a lot of people who believe that some of the wrongs that have been perpetrated against the Acehnese people have at least begun to be addressed since the tsunami, and we hope that this momentum won't be lost when the international community moves on to another disaster."
Dushku is a professor of government at Suffolk University in Boston, whose interest in Aceh began after she organized a panel discussion with Acehnese refugees and solidarity activists to raise awareness and money after last year's tsunami. She has traveled with her students to several countries to help them understand first-hand the realities in such places as Nicaragua under the Sandinistas and Romania after the fall of Ceausescu.
Renner is a senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute. He is currently working on a two-year research project focusing on how natural disasters have affected peacemaking in Aceh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. Renner serves as project director for the Institute's annual Vital Signs publication. In addition to his duties at Worldwatch, he is also a member of the Global Policy Forum Board, the Hague Appeal for Peace International Advisory Board, and the International Advisory Group of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research (Sweden).
The Aceh delegation was organized by Global Exchange, an international human rights organization based in San Francisco. For more information, see www.globalexchange.org.
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