Disaster relief efforts fail to reach remote Sichuan villages

As relief materials pile up in major rescue centres in the quake-hit areas in Sichuan province, villagers from rural communities are complaining they have been forgotten by the government.

“It’s been four days, four days. I didn’t see any government official bother to ask us how we have been coping. I have to say I’m not satisfied with the government’s relief efforts,” said 66-year-old villager Chen Zhongfen, from Shengli village, Taiping township on the outskirts of Lushan county, the epicentre of Saturday’s 7.0-magnitude quake that has claimed 193 lives, left 25 missing and injured more than 12,000 people.

“I haven’t got anything yet, and we heard that the aid had all gone to the central areas,” Chen said.

Chen was among more than 2,000 villagers in Shengli who have been struggling to cope with post-quake life. Rain has begun to fall in the area increasing their need for more and better shelter and food.

But four days into the disaster, villagers like Chen in rural communities said they had so far been left out of the government’s disaster relief efforts.

Communist party chief and President Xi Jinping on Tuesday afternoon chaired a special Politburo Standing Committee meeting on relief work in the quake zone, at which he vowed to keep searching for missing people even though the 72-hour window for the best chance of survival passed on Tuesday.

The standing committee meeting promised to ensure “everyone in the quake zone will have food, clothes, clean water, temporary shelter and medicine”.

However, in Shengli, more than 350 villagers have had to share nine tents and about 100 bottles of water. The villagers said that even these few tents were becoming useless as they had no floors and the rain had been quite heavy for the past two days. As well, they were running out of food, and only had corn soup to eat.

“I can endure all these [hardships], but what about the pregnant women and the village elders?” said villager He Xiaobing.

He, a 42-year-old farmer, has had to move his family and all the belongings they could salvage from his house into a self-made tent crammed full of 20 people.

A fight broke out among 50 angry villagers in Taiping township as they scrambled for a few boxes of water and instant noodles handed out by rescuers. Police had to be called in to disperse them.

Villagers questioned local authorities as to why people in Lushan county got more than enough relief materials, while many rural people like them remained starving and homeless.

Wang Dong, party chief of Taiping, urged villagers to stay calm and remain where they were as “a lot of supplies would be coming once the clogged roads were cleared". He said most of the resources were concentrated in Lushan, which is about 30 kilometers from Taiping.

But Zhang Xueming, a rescue worker from Wenzhou-based Blue Sky Rescue Team, said the road conditions were not the main problem.

“Most of the tents are provided by companies and they all want them to be sent to major areas to get more public recognition,” he said.

Official media like Xinhua have given relief efforts a positive spin focusing mainly on the heroic rescue operations centred in Lushan county and Longmen township, especially after Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to the area on Sunday.

Yang Hao, a 36-year-old farmer from Shengli village, said the government and media have focused on the major centres and forgotten the victims in remote and cut-off areas.

“We are the forgotten ones, nobody cares about us. I wish Premier Li had come to our town, then we wouldn’t have problems today.”

Tuesday 23 April 2013

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1221711/disaster-relief-efforts-fail-reach-remote-sichuan-villages

6 dead, 5 missing in Guizhou landslide

Six people died, two were injured and another five have been reported missing following a landslide that occurred Monday in southwest China's Guizhou Province.

The landslide occurred at 10:42 p.m., when construction workers were repairing a road damaged by a previous landslide in Sinan County on Sunday evening, said officials from the county government Tuesday.

Monday's landslide buried the workers and excavators which had been fixing the road.

Rescuers are searching for the missing workers.

Tuesday 23 April 2013

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-04/23/c_132332905.htm

Lighter of pyres

No DVI but an encouraging insight into burial customs (note blogger):

There is nothing extraordinary about the way she looks. Yet Shanti Behera, 52, a resident of Sambalpur, is unique. For the last decade she has been running the local crematorium. According to traditional Hindu customs, women are not even allowed to go the crematorium, leave aside participating in the funeral rites. But compelled to provide two square meals for her family after the demise of her husband, Shanti willingly took on the job of being the full-time keeper at the Kamlibatar Rajghat crematorium.

Married at 15 years, she had just turned 40 when she lost her husband to multiple illnesses. “I had no work and six children, including four daughters, to support. I was thinking of seeking work as a domestic worker but destiny, I guess, had something else in store for me. My husband was the caretaker of this cremation ground. He worked there on a daily wage basis and so when he fell severely ill and was bed ridden, I had to take over his duties or else he wouldn't have got any money,” Shanti recalls.

“As this is the only crematorium in the area, thousands of households were dependent on it. My husband was the only keeper there and his absence would have posed a huge problem,” she adds.

Her journey from being a housewife to becoming the manager of a crematorium was a difficult one. There were several personal as well as social hurdles. Initially, she found it very difficult to look at the bodies being brought for cremation. She also faced opposition from her relatives and friends because she was daring to go against tradition. But Shanti grew stronger as time passed.

“My husband was cremated at the same ground where he worked. I had to take over just after a few days after his death. It was very painful for me but I went ahead. Then, a few months later, my son died in a road accident. I don’t know how I set the pyre for his funeral. It was a heart breaking moment for me. But ever since, I have learnt to face pain and hardship. I sincerely took to doing the job on a full-time basis, despite being aware that customs dictate that women are strictly prohibited from working at a cremation ground.”

Her job is certainly not for the faint-hearted. Arranging the wood for the pyre, setting it alight, and ensuring that it burns properly — she is always on her toes, come rain or shine, performing her job to the best of her ability. Often she has to work until the wee hours to ensure that everything is done right.

“I work round the clock, and am there whenever the need arises. In fact, I have had to come here at midnight braving terrible storms, too. Over the years, I have realised that this work is not only a means of livelihood but has a higher purpose. I believe I am helping the dead souls rest in peace and that gives me immense satisfaction. The only thing I find difficult is to see a family cremate a child. It reminds me of the worst experience of my life — cremating my own son,” she says.

For the first five years, Shanti worked for free because the municipal authorities did not believe that she would be able to manage the crematorium properly. During that period the family survived on tips, which was insufficient. Later, she started receiving a monthly payment of Rs. 1,500 from the municipality. Managing expenses for the whole month on this meagre salary, however, has only gotten tougher in recent years.

“I have to pay Rs. 600 as rent for the single room where we are staying. I don't even have a Below Poverty Line (BPL) card so that I can get subsidised rice. I have run from pillar to post to get a BPL card, but to no avail.”

While making ends meet is still a struggle for Shanti, she is glad that at least the community’s attitude towards her has changed. While the local people were once shocked by her bold move, today they respect and admire her courage.

Says local resident Padmabati Behera, “She is a great woman and everybody respects her. She is doing a job that no other woman had dared to do. I have seen her over the years and feel proud of her. She is working selflessly without any expectations.”

Families visiting the cremation ground also draw great comfort from her presence.

Many hope that Shanti’s example will inspire other women to opt for unusual professions. Says Abhida Nanda Mishra, an academic from Sambalpur, “For me, Shanti's work in the crematorium is not just a livelihood issue but, looked at from a broader prospective, is about women's empowerment and acceptance in society. It represents positive change.”

Tuesday 23 April 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/lighter-of-pyres/article4644118.ece

Exhumed remains of WWII Soviet soldiers reburied at Poland cemetery

The remains of 431 Soviet army soldiers killed during a World War II battle in Poland were reburied over the weekend, Russian military officials said.

Vyacheslav Polovinkin, the head of the Russian Defense Ministry office in charge of military memorials in Poland, said the remains of the Soviet soldiers killed during the 1945 Siege of Kustrin in western Poland were laid to rest Sunday at an army memorial cemetery at Cybinka, Poland, RIA Novosti reported.

The remains had been exhumed from a 1950s mass grave near the battle site at Kustrin -- what is now called Kostrzyn-on-the-Oder -- after months of painstaking work.

The Soviet soldiers fell during an Eastern Front battle in the final months of World War II at Kustrin, about 50 miles from Berlin. It was one of the final roadblocks between the advancing Soviets and the German capital.

German troops turned the industrial town into a powerful fortified area meant to prevent the advance of Soviet troops to Berlin. The city was severely damaged during the 1945 assault.

A 2011 book about the battle, "The Siege of Kustrin" by British author Tony Le Tissier, said the Germans defended the outpost tenaciously, sending high school students and elderly men to fight against the Soviet soldiers. The Germans were driven from Kustrin after a 60-day siege that resulted in thousands of casualties on both sides.

After its capture, Soviet troops killed in the siege were buried in several mass graves. In 1953, the remains of the soldiers were transferred to a military cemetery near Kostrzyn but over the years it had become clear the work had been carried out hastily and the identities of the soldiers were lost.

Late last year, Polish researchers found the remains of more than 100 soldiers and work continued this spring when more than 300 more remains were found.

The Polish historical group Witez carried out the exhumation work with the help of domestic and foreign volunteers from Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Germany, its director, Julian Wierzbowski, told the Polish news agency PAP.

In one of the graves, which contained the remains of 40 soldiers, volunteers found a medal for bravery. The number stamped on it could help officials establish the identity of its owner and that could yield clues to the identities of others buried at the site.

Work on the exhumations is expected to be competed in fall.

Sunday's reburial in Cybinka was preceded by a short service performed by the Orthodox parish in Torzym. It was attended by representatives of the Russian, Belarusian and Kazakh embassies, the news agency reported.

Before World War II, the military cemetery in Kostrzyn was a German sports stadium but over the decades became forgotten and is covered by forest, with its only remaining monument an entrance gate.

Wierzbowski told the Polish newspaper Gazeta Lubuska remains found were mostly incomplete skeletons, which often lacked the head, but there were exceptions in which the remains of several soldiers had been preserved in their entirety.

"Some of the people had with them small personal items like knives, razors or medallions," he said.

Krzysztof Socha, an archaeologist at the Museum of the Kostrzyn Fortress, added some of the bodies had amputated limbs while others were charred, indicating they had died in fires.

Tuesday 23 April 2013

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2013/04/23/Exhumed-remains-of-WWII-Soviet-soldiers-reburied-at-Poland-cemetery/UPI-78321366689960/

One more body pulled out of collapsed pit at Kyekyewere

One more body has been pulled out of the collapsed mining pit at Kyekyewere in the Central region, bringing the number of bodies collected out of the pit to 18.

The taskforce which carried out the rescue mission began the process of closing the pits over the weekend. Lands and Natural Resources Minister, Alhaji Inusah Fuseini said a mass burial will be held tomorrow for the deceased.

Speaking on the AM Show on MULTI TV, Lands and Natural Resources Minister, Alhaji Inusah Fuseini, hinted that illegalising small scale mining will culminate into the formation of a mining association to partner government in regulating the sector.

He however indicated that although they will be buried on the same day, they will not be buried in the same grave.

17 bodies of illegal miners popularly called “galamsey operators” were retrieved from an abandoned mine pit which caved in on them, last Monday 5th April.

The collapsed pit is one of many abandoned by the God First Enterprise Mining Company at Dunkwaw-Kyekyewere.

The victims consist of 15 males and two females, including a couple. Seven of the deceased are natives of Amoafo while the remaining nine are from Kyekyewere.

A Second year student of the Dunkwa Secondary Technical School, Clement Abugri, and his mother identified only as Ayishetu, were among the victims.

Tuesday 23 April 2013

http://edition.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201304/104836.php

Remembrance day for World War II victims in Serbia

Health Minister Slavica Djukic Dejanovic laid a wreath on behalf of the Serbian government at the Old Fairgrounds, the site of a WWII Nazi death camp.

Wreath were also laid by representatives of death camp survivors and association of victims’ families, the Association of the Jewish Municipalities in Serbia, the Roma ethnic minority, Head of the EU Delegation to Serbia Vincent Degert, diplomatic representatives of Israel and Germany, and representatives of the city government.

Lazar Krstajic, aged 88, who was incarcerated at the camp between May and September 1943, told reporters that the thing he remembers most were the mornings, when the dead bodies would be thrown into the river.

Israeli Ambassador to Serbia Yossef Levi said this is one of the places of greatest suffering of Jews, Serbs and Roma in Serbia, noting that most of the victims at the Old Fairgrounds camp were women and children. From this site, prisoners were transported in special vehicles with gas chambers, suffocated in transport and buried on the outskirts of Belgrade, in Jajinci, recalled Levi.

Remembrance day is marked in Serbia on the day of the liberation of the Jasenovac concentration camp, one of the most horrific death camps referred to by historians as the Serbian Auschwitz, formed by the Croatian Ustase at the time of the Independent State of Croatia, a WWII puppet state of Nazi Germany.

April 22, 1945 was the day when a group of 1,075 remaining prisoners tried to break out from the camp, with only 127 finding their way to freedom.

The death camp network in the Independent State of Croatia comprised some 80 camps in the territory of the present-day Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, the biggest of which was Jasenovac.

Based on early exhumations, a state commission in the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia estimated that 500,000 Serbs, 80,000 Roma, 32,000 Jews and tens of thousands of anti-Fascists of different nationalities went missing in the Jasenovac camp. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has since confirmed these estimates.

Around 100,000 prisoners were held at the Old Fairgrounds camp, also located in the territory of the Independent State of Croatia. Of this number, 20,000 – mostly Jews – were killed at the camp, and another 20,000 at execution sites in the vicinity of Belgrade.

Tuesday 23 April 2013

http://inserbia.info/news/2013/04/remembrance-day-for-world-war-ii-victims-in-serbia/

Teams hunt for survivors of powerful China quake

Luo Shiqiang sat near chunks of concrete, bricks and a ripped orange sofa and told how his grandfather was just returning from feeding chickens when their house collapsed and crushed him to death in this weekend's powerful earthquake in southwestern China.

"We lost everything in such a short time," the 20-year-old college student said Sunday. He said his cousin also was injured in the collapse, but that other members of his family were spared because they were out working in the fields of hard-hit Longmen village in Lushan county.

Saturday's earthquake in Sichuan province killed at least 186 people, injured more than 11,000 and left nearly two dozen missing, mostly in the rural communities around Ya'an city, along the same fault line where a devastating quake to the north killed more than 90,000 people in Sichuan and neighboring areas five years ago in one of China's worst disasters.

The Lushan and Baoxing counties hardest-hit on Saturday had escaped the worst of the damage in the 2008 quake, and residents there said they benefited little from the region's rebuilding after the disaster, with no special reinforcements made or new evacuation procedures introduced in their remote communities.

Luo said he wished more had been done to make his community's buildings quake-resistant. "Maybe the country's leaders really wanted to help us, but when it comes to the lower levels the officials don't carry it out," he said.

Relief teams flew in helicopters and dynamited through landslides Sunday to reach some of the most isolated communities, where rescuers searched for survivors.

Many residents complained that although emergency teams were quick to carry away bodies and search for survivors, they had so far done little to distribute aid. "No water, no shelter," read a hand-written sign held up by children on a roadside in Longmen.

The quake — measured by China's earthquake administration at magnitude 7.0 and by the U.S. Geological Survey at 6.6 — struck shortly after 8 a.m. on Saturday.

Monday 22 April 2013

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130422/NATION/304220331/Teams-hunt-survivors-powerful-China-quake?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE%7Cs