Editorial
The agony that Haiti goes through
Our heart-felt sympathies for quake victims
THE magnitude of the devastation wrought by the earthquake in Haiti calls for an immediate emergency response from around the world. And that is what has been happening. Governments across the globe as well as international and local relief organisations have been quick to answer the call. Bangladesh for its part is despatching medical teams to the ravaged country. With more that 100,000 people dead in Port au Prince, the capital, and elsewhere in the impoverished country, it is easy to imagine the totality of the destruction. The casualties will likely be a lot more than what is being estimated at this point. It is the sheer scale of the devastation that is mind-boggling. Almost all buildings in the capital have collapsed. The United Nations office has come down on sixteen of its employees, including the head and deputy head of the mission. There are reports of peace keepers from various nations having lost their lives in the tremor. Not even the presidential palace was spared and it was sheer good fortune that President Rene Preval and his wife managed to survive.
For Haiti, unfortunately, disasters of the natural as well as man-made kind have been part of life in these past many years. For decades it struggled to free itself from what then was an entrenched dictatorship under the Duvaliers. Subsequently, the elected presidency of Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown in a coup and was not restored to office until Bill Clinton, then US president, sent in soldiers to bring the military junta to heel. Aristide was again overthrown some years later. Last year, floods and storms ravaged the island nation. And now the earthquake, 7 points on the Richter scale, has silenced the country into shock and countless deaths. For the first time in two centuries, Haiti has seen disaster on such a scale bring it down.
It will be a tough job restoring a semblance of order in a country that has been subjected to near-apocalyptic doom. And yet the task of re-establishing some decent order in the lives of those who have survived is necessary. There is the need to ensure that those who have survived do not succumb to disease and pestilence as a result of the earthquake.
In large measure, Haiti's predicament is a wake-up call for other nations vulnerable to earthquakes and similar natural disasters. In Bangladesh, where tremors have been felt in recent times, it is particularly important that the general public be educated, on a continuous basis, on safety measures that could be resorted to if and when such a disaster strikes.
Our prayers go out for those who have perished in Haiti. And our hope is that those who have survived will, with global goodwill, find it possible to pick up the pieces and move on.
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