As millions of Taiwanese hit the road, took the high-speed rail or flew home to celebrate the Lunar New Year last week, one area of Taiwan had nothing festive about it: Three years on, many parts of Greater Kaohsiung devastated by Typhoon Morakot in August 2009 continue to bear the scars of nature’s fury and government inattention.
Traveling the area, one is struck by how little has changed since Morakot, the most damaging Typhoon to hit Taiwan in decades, swept through southern parts of the nation, causing billions of dollars in damage and killing as many as 700 people.
Most roads around Siaolin Village (小林) and Namasiya Township (那瑪夏) remain unpaved, making it very difficult for vehicles to drive around and subjecting visitors to unbearable dust clouds.
In Siaolin, a single, forlorn house that by pure luck was spared in a landslide that killed hundreds, remains defiantly. Underneath the heavy canopy of rocks lie the remains of bodies never uncovered, a reminder of our powerlessness against the forces of nature. The area is filled with dry rivers filled with rocks, crushed roads and tunnels, and the sundry remnants of man-made objects pulverized by a much greater force.
Nearby, parts of Namasiya Township look like they belong in war zones in Iraq or Afghanistan, not in a modern, wealthy country. The town has seen little rebuilding since 2009. Schools and community centers all lie empty, the walls still bearing the signs of waters rising to unfathomable levels.
New, slightly out of place pastel-colored bridges are being built, with several others standing temporarily. The entire zone has the feel of an immense construction site, with cars and trucks negotiating gravel roads at a snail’s pace, often near dangerous cliffs.
Some communities have been rebuilt, such as one with the assistance of World Vision, but the progress is largely insufficient and has been far too slow to compensate for the thousands of households that were wiped out during the deluge. One wonders whether the small communities that have been rebuilt — often with little attention paid to the traditions of the Aborigines whose homes were destroyed — were not erected simply to show that the government was doing something and providing convenient photo opportunities when necessary.
More than three years after the catastrophe, surely there should be more signs of progress. That this is not the case highlights the lack of commitment by local and central government to sustained and durable efforts to help rebuild the lives of those hit by the typhoon.
Given the magnitude of the devastation, the Greater Kaohsiung government alone cannot be responsible; this requires a coordinated effort at both local and national levels, with investment to rehabilitate the largely Aboriginal part of the nation.
The little progress that has been seen serves as a reminder that governments often regard Aborigines as second-class citizens, leaving them to fend for themselves, while the rest of the country presses ahead with science parks, glitzy shopping malls, casinos and extravaganzas of all sorts.
Worse is that while other emblems of social injustice — from government-sanctioned theft of agricultural land to the exploitation of workers — manage to make the news and become part of the national discourse, the inhabitants of the wastelands left behind by Morakot are simply ignored, compassion for their ongoing plight having faded a long time ago.
“History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes” (attributed to Mark Twain). The USSR was the international bully during the Cold War as it sought to make the world safe for Soviet-style Communism. China is now the global bully as it applies economic power and invests in Mao’s (毛澤東) magic weapons (the People’s Liberation Army [PLA], the United Front Work Department, and the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]) to achieve world domination. Freedom-loving countries must respond to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), especially in the Indo-Pacific (IP), as resolutely as they did against the USSR. In 1954, the US and its allies
Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Shen You-chung (沈有忠) on Thursday last week urged democratic nations to boycott China’s military parade on Wednesday next week. The parade, a grand display of Beijing’s military hardware, is meant to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. While China has invited world leaders to attend, many have declined. A Kyodo News report on Sunday said that Japan has asked European and Asian leaders who have yet to respond to the invitation to refrain from attending. Tokyo is seeking to prevent Beijing from spreading its distorted interpretation of wartime history, the report
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in China yesterday, where he is to attend a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin today. As this coincides with the 50 percent US tariff levied on Indian products, some Western news media have suggested that Modi is moving away from the US, and into the arms of China and Russia. Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation fellow Sana Hashmi in a Taipei Times article published yesterday titled “Myths around Modi’s China visit” said that those analyses have misrepresented India’s strategic calculations, and attempted to view
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) stood in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa on Thursday last week, flanked by Chinese flags, synchronized schoolchildren and armed Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops, he was not just celebrating the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the “Tibet Autonomous Region,” he was making a calculated declaration: Tibet is China. It always has been. Case closed. Except it has not. The case remains wide open — not just in the hearts of Tibetans, but in history records. For decades, Beijing has insisted that Tibet has “always been part of China.” It is a phrase