Stark contrast in Thai aid distribution

While foreign survivors of Thailand’s tsunami disaster were put up in an international school complete with beds, television sets and internet connections, locals from a devastated fishing village slept outside, many without blankets, burning wood to keep warm and keep mosquitos at bay.

Locals said today they are torn between wanting to help the foreigners who are the lifeblood of their economy and getting what they can from the relief effort.

“No one came to help. We just helped each other out,” said 65-year-old Yokhin Chuaynui, whose home in the fishing village of Ban Nam Khem was destroyed. “When injured Thais went to the hospital, if they weren’t about to die they helped the Westerners first.”

The contrast has been most marked in Thailand, where wealthy tourist resorts brush up against shanty fishing villages, but all around the Indian Ocean there have been reports of efforts to rescue foreigners leaving locals feeling passed by – or insulted by the meagre aid that has trickled to them since Sunday.

Yorkshire tourist Robert Eunson, 52, said that regardless of nationality, “the greatest need should be given the greatest care”.

But he said there was an element of self interest in Thai authorities’ rush to help foreigners.

“Tourism is so important to them so it’s a hierarchy,” he said. “They’re trying to help their guests first, but that is the nature of Thai people – they will put someone else first.”

Shortly after the water subsided from exclusive resorts and palm-fringed beaches of southern Thailand, authorities began setting up makeshift embassies, providing free phones and food to tourists. Hotels and an international school that survived relatively unscathed threw open their doors to shellshocked tourists and foreign governments laid on evacuation flights.

But Wimol Thongthae said that in Ban Nam Khem, there was no help at all on the first day.

“More than 2,000, or half of villagers in Nam Khem, have disappeared,” he said.

Eight out of 15 in his family are still missing – including his three-year-old daughter.

“I’m living without hope and have not received any assistance,” he said.

In Sri Lanka, some locals complained that helicopters that could have spread relief to devastated villages instead were used to rescue high profile survivors.

One early flight evacuated former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his entourage, who were holidaying in southern Sri Lanka.

In India, survivors complained of feeling insulted by piles of second hand clothes dumped at roadsides for them.

At a makeshift relief camp for women inside a marriage hall in Nagappattinam, the southern coastal city hardest hit by the weekend’s tsunamis, the complaints are loud.

Refugees grumbled over what they view as the condescending attitude of relief workers. More than 4,000 residents died there from India’s toll of over 7,300.

“We have been insulted so much that we don’t want any aid from anybody,” said 35-year-old Lakshimi, who goes by only one name. “We are prepared to die. They bring food for a few hundred people to a place where thousands of people are sheltered. They bring too few clothes, too little milk, which results in a melee. We have never looked for alms from anybody, now we have been reduced to beggars.”

In northern Sumatra island, which took the brunt of Sunday’s giant magnitude-9.0 quake and tsunami wave, there were virtually no tourists and relief efforts concentrated on entire towns and villages that were all but levelled by the disaster.

In Ban Nam Khem, fishing boats have been dumped by the waves in the middle of town, a quarter mile from the beach. They are still there and the stench of dead bodies rotting inside is overpowering.

“The government gave more importance to Khao Lak and other tourist areas … because this area is full of poor people,” said provincial Senator. Wongphan Natakuathung.

Deputy Agriculture Minister Newin Chidchob, who is in charge of the rescue effort at Ban Nam Khem, insisted the government had not ignored their plight.

“We do not abandon them. Everybody has tried their best,” he said Friday as authorities pumped water out of streets. “If it is not fast enough in the villagers’ eyes, it just could not be helped because the situation is so severe.”