Hindust****an takes UN aid for tsunami victims13-01-2005
PORT BLAIR: Hindustan, which had shunned foreign help for its tsunami victims, has now allowed UNICEF to help mount a campaign in the battered Andaman and Nicobar islands to prevent an outbreak of measles and blindness among children.
… Doctors from UNICEF have visited the islands of Little Andaman, Car Nicobar and Nancowry, where access is tightly controlled, to inoculate thousands of children against measles, and hand out vitamin A tablets.
Other major aid groups, such as Medicins Sans Frontier and OXFAM are still barred from the fragile chain of tropical islands, home to five of the world’s most primitive tribes.
The Andaman and Nicobar islands, mainly the more southerly Nicobar group, was one of the worst hit areas of India and account for almost half the more than 15,700 deaths.
That should teach the Hindu extremists not to get too cocky next time. Did they get carried away by day-dreaming the ‘rich’ image of Hindustan created by Bollywood, was somehow real? Lol.
I say, get back in the poverty line and beg the whole World for more aid because your going to need it (don’t forget the $90 Billion debt that the Hindustan owes).
Re: Hindustan ashamedly takes UN aid for tsunami victims
India has just said that the monetary aid and food and relief material would be best used if send to more needy countries. It has always welcomed long term infrastructural aid and personal volunteers. Anyway, your hatred and jealousy of India is spilling all out, is not hatred and jealousy in direct contrast to Islamic teachings, which you must be highly familiar with as you carry your islamic credentials on your sleeves.
Re: Hindustan ashamedly takes UN aid for tsunami victims
Before being critical of India, check out Pakistan’s response to poor Bengalis when cyclone his East Pakistan in 1970. More than 500,000 died in the cyclone with no help from the West Pakistanis. A year later Bangladesh was formed.
Deadlier '70 cyclone taught harsh lessons
Foreign aid trickled in, then was stolen
War that created Bangladesh followed
BOB REGULY
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
There was no torrent of foreign help in 1970 when a cyclone sent a wall of water crashing up the Bay of Bengal in East Pakistan, killing far more than the number who died in the current tsunami disaster.
Much of the foreign aid that did arrive belatedly, as the realization of the scale of the loss grew, was stolen — or appropriated by the Pakistan military. Some say the Bengalis’ resentment of the slow and stingy help from West Pakistan, far away on the other side of India, cost the Karachi government half its country a year later with the formation of an independent Bangladesh.
The hijacking of foreign aid was not lost on the peasantry in a land already simmering with separatism, a situation the Indonesian government faces today. The Bengalis formed a ragtag guerrilla army and fought the West Pakistanis as alien occupiers.
The lesson for the current donor nations is to ride herd on their generosity to make sure it gets into the hands of the most abject people at the village level.
The examples of diverted aid at that time were everywhere. An official from the Canadian embassy and I watched as the first of 14 Canadian relief flights landed at the airport serving the East Pakistan capital of Dacca.
The swing-tail air force Yukon transport had the most valuable cargo, medical supplies. We saw the medicines and antibiotics loaded into trucks and trundle off. Weeks later, over dinner, the diplomat told me that those trucks had kept on going with the million-dollar cargo to Calcutta, where, he said, it was sold on the black market.
The United Nations children’s aid agency, UNICEF, brought in a fleet of five-tonne Mercedes diesel high-clearance trucks intended to carry relief supplies into flooded areas. Government officials refused to allow them to be used, insisting the U.N. instead pay extortionate prices to hire rickety indigenous trucks. It did. A U.N. official told me later that the military ended up taking the shiny new vehicles.
I had been in Beirut on assignment for the Toronto Star when I was ordered to proceed to East Pakistan. My seatmate on the flight to Dacca (now Dhaka) was a Norwegian from the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. He was to take charge of the ICRC aid effort.
A year later we happened to meet in Dacca on the eve of the India-Pakistan war of December 1971, when Bangladesh was created. I asked him what the final body count was from the cyclone. While official records today say 200,000 died and another 100,000 went missing, he said then it was 400,000.
Two of the foreign aid agencies stand out in my memory. The best was from Germany. It was a disaster unit from the military with its own dedicated Transall transport planes. Their specialty was mobile water purification. Within four hours of landing, they were pumping drinking water into rubber ponds.
Britain’s Oxfam was also impressive. Its aid overseers brooked no nonsense from the local kleptocracy.
Why the difference in the scale of foreign help in the two water-wall disasters? Media technology. I had to send out my stories by enervated Morse code operators. Now TV can send out live emotion-laden pictures.
Bob Reguly was a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star from 1966 until 1972, based in Washington and Rome.
Re: Hindustan ashamedly takes UN aid for tsunami victims
What is the sense here in using the word 'ashamedly'? There is something disgusting that the Arab countries have shown an indifferent attitude towards killed not in a kufr India, but also towards beleivers killed in Malasya, Indonesia.
Re: Hindustan ashamedly takes UN aid for tsunami victims
indifferent attitude, some may have while others have stepped up to the plate and have donated considerable amounts to help with the disaster, from public and private sources.
S&C do you always have to be so negative. if the pissing contests between Pakistanis and Indians end here, as well as in the 2 countries, we would all be better off.
Re: Hindustan ashamedly takes UN aid for tsunami victims
S n C, you wont stop posting topics you no idea about . ha.
You are talking about debt india has, how much did you say 90b, then you should also know that india's foreign reserve i more than 120b+.
Ok ok, i wont start anything here. mods please del this carp.
Re: Hindustan ashamedly takes UN aid for tsunami victims
Don’t blame the Arabs for not giving enough aid. They are already picked on enough. You have to understand that Arabs have a very matter-of-fact approach to death. This stems from a belief that life on earth is transient and our time here is appointed. Hence useless to blame indifferent attitude towards kufr and muslim alike.
Re: Hindustan ashamedly takes UN aid for tsunami victims
LOL. This post and comments within are hilarious! Ohh and S.C. has the right to air his opnions just as you do, unless the Admin find it breeches the rules or is pointless.
The only thing shamless is that we are turning another human disaster as in asia and continuing in Africa, in to a political trump card...
Re: Hindustan ashamedly takes UN aid for tsunami victims
John i hate to be a miseryguts, but i have told you before, that look at your own back yard first…
Aid to Indian islands ‘hijacked’
The Indian military has played a key role in getting aid to the islands
Red Cross officials have accused the authorities in India’s tsunami-struck Andaman and Nicobar Islands of “hijacking” aid supplies.
Red Cross officials have accused the authorities in India’s tsunami-struck Andaman and Nicobar Islands of “hijacking” aid supplies.
A spokesman for the agency said relief materials seized on the islands had been found with government workers.
Island officials have not commented on the charge but stress their policy that foreign aid to the islands only be distributed through the government.
Aid has yet to reach remote parts of many islands, a BBC correspondent says.
More than 1,800 people are now known to have died on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands after sea surges triggered by a massive underwater earthquake struck there on 26 December.
At least a further 5,600 people are still missing after the disaster, the Andaman and Nicobar administrative chief, Ram Kapse, said.
The official death toll in India, including the islands and mainland parts of Tamil Nadu state, now stands at 10,672.
Relief material ‘robbed’
An official from the Indian Red Cross Society, Basudev Dass, told the BBC that they had been informed by the Andamans authorities that all non-governmental agencies - Indian as well as international - would be barred from working on the islands.
Until now only the United Nations children’s agency, Unicef, had been given permission to operate outside of the capital, Port Blair.
Mr Dass said the local administration told him it was capable of conducting the relief operation without any need of external help.
The BBC’s Subir Bhaumik says there have been continued complaints of shortage of relief material from remote areas as well as reports of hungry people looting supply trucks in at least four areas.
‘Robbed it’
Mr Dass said Red Cross supplies shipped to the islands’ capital, Port Blair, were seized at the docks on Thursday, apparently for distribution by the government.
“They hijacked our relief material. They robbed it,” Mr Dass told the Associated Press news agency.
“They want to take all the relief material and distribute it. We are very clear that we will go and distribute it to the real beneficiaries,” he said.
The Indian branch of Rotary International says its offer to build 1,500 homes for displaced islanders had been rebuffed.
Mr Kapse said the government would welcome the offer of building materials from aid agencies but would undertake the construction work itself.
The Indian government and military has been managing the aid operation for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Visitors are banned from visiting much of the Andamans.
Correspondents say the islands are of high military importance to the government. In addition, the government has sought to restrict outside access to a number of primitive tribes on the islands. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4172035.stm
Re: Hindustan ashamedly takes UN aid for tsunami victims
Its as usual for Pakistani news papers to use hindustan as it is for Indian members on this forum to some how fit the issue for East Pakistan in every post. By the way do you like India or Hindustan or Bharat? What does east Pakistan have to do with the way India is responding to the crisis. Are you guys trying to justify what Hindustani government is doing by raising the issue of East Pakistan? By the way, i totally understand that when a catastrophy like this hits any where, its not that easy to get the aid to the people. Things take time to happen, but you guys are all just obsessed with Pakistan arent you?
kaka what is the use of the 120+ billion reserve when the people are dying because they dont have anything to eat?
Re: Hindustan ashamedly takes UN aid for tsunami victims
pp, if you can explain to me the connection between the tsunami, hindu extremists and bollywood as mentioned in the very first post, i'd most gladly explain to you the east pakistan point.
anyway, looks like the original article used "India", which the poster decided to change to "hindustan", editing it in even within the article. haha!
Re: Hindustan ashamedly takes UN aid for tsunami victims
PP check it again, no one died of hunger in ages. India produces more then it can consume. the problem is with the distribution. And yes 120b means a lot.
I posted that figure in response to SC who quoted that india has 90b debt. There is no need of foreign aid if india can use its resources properly.
And hundreds of years of exploitation by british and 50 years of poverty wont go away overnite. everything takes time and the wheel has started turning now.
And again indians are not as obssessed with pakistan as much u think. since this is a pakistani board then ofcourse we not gonna discuss an issue in manipur or mizoram.
by the way i prefer bharat. though i have nothing against any other names. each and every one is fine.
Re: Hindustan ashamedly takes UN aid for tsunami victims
all these propaganda is not working
US will consider backing India for UNSC
“There is a lot of goodwill and support for India’s role in the region as witnessed in its timely and speedy aid to tsunami-affected countries in Asia,” added US Congresswoman Diane E Watson of California.
With India pressing for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, New Delhi has been keen to show itself as a regional power rather than a victim and has dispatched aid to other countries hit by the December 26 tsunamis like Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Indonesia.
Re: Hindustan ashamedly takes UN aid for tsunami victims
whats the use of a seat in the SC when so many people still starve in poor states like orissa? i guess it is more of a status symbol.. hell yeah but then china was no better when it joined the unsc in the 50s.. in fact they sucked big time then.. they had a repressive regime under mao and they specialized in flogging peasants to death
