‘I am haunted by it’: Survivors of deadly train crash in India recount trauma
“Everything happened so quickly,” said Subhashish Patra, a student who was travelling with his family from Balasore to the state capital, Bhubaneswar, on the Coromandel Express. He was planning to take his mother to a hospital in Bhubaneswar to seek treatment for a hand injury and then to travel toContinue Reading
As climate risk grows, resilience must match new highs
Supposedly once-in-a-thousand-year weather disasters are now a frequent occurrence, triggered by human-caused climate change.
In Southeast Asia the quickly increasing risk profile calls for resilience building, not only to enable a return to how things were, but to prevent even bigger dangers. National-level policy in the region will need to devote a far higher share of investments to both mitigate climate change and adapt to it.
Singapore’s Green Plan 2030 is an example of seeing climate change as an existential threat and dedicating resources with a whole-of-government approach and anticipation toward climate and energy investment. As a living document that continues to evolve, the plan contains concrete steps to expand the coverage of trees and green spaces, cut solid and water wastage, expand public transportation, and most crucially, even if tough to achieve, switch from polluting fossil fuels to renewable, clean energy.
But far more effort is needed in Southeast Asia to create the necessary conditions for driving sustainable development. The nature of risk has shifted from extreme danger being rare to frequent. Accordingly, far greater emphasis needs to be placed on averting the worst impacts of floods and storms, droughts, and heatwaves. Such a shift is necessary but politically difficult because the rewards of green investments are not always visible immediately but accrue over time.
Southeast Asia under Severe Stress
As rising temperatures grip the world, Southeast Asia has recently seen record-breaking temperatures that are already inflicting a severe blow to lives and livelihoods. A 1% increase in temperature could raise food production costs as much as 0.8% in Southeast Asian economies, as evidenced by food price hikes in the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
With its population of nearly 700 million people, our region is among the primary victims of global warming. Featured at the top of lists of climate vulnerable countries, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam and Myanmar have had the highest numbers of people displaced due to natural calamities. Ironically, Southeast Asia is also a leading contributor to additional greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Regional economies have grown at some 5% a year over the past decade with a 6% annual increase in electricity demand, most of it met unfortunately by fossil fuels. These polluting fuels comprise some 75% of Southeast Asia’s electricity, with coal at about 50%, with the green portion of the grid expanding far too slowly.
Vietnam illustrates the challenge of securing economic growth in accordance with climate actions. Bangladesh and Vietnam are ranked at the top globally on exposure to flooding, and both risk losing a significant portion of GDP to climate damages. Vietnam’s GDP loss from climate change was an estimated 3.2% in 2020 and is expected to rise to as great as 14.5% by 2050 without strong action.
The case is clear for prioritising such mitigation strategies as coastal embankments, residential and business zoning, retrofitting infrastructure and stronger drainage systems.
The Twin Tasks of Mitigation and Adaptation
The upshot of these trends is that GHG emissions and disasters are causally linked. With the current pattern of fossil-fuel led economic growth, sea levels will continue to rise.
The water could climb 0.2 metres by 2050 in Singapore. Possibly there and elsewhere in low-lying Southeast Asia – together with land subsidence, or sinking in coastal cities – this kind of sea level would wreak havoc. The region would clearly want to be a leading advocate of wind, solar and other renewables, and ASEAN must make this direction its top priority.
Since the late 1990s, ASEAN has said that renewables are a key to regional trade and integration based on regional power grids. Some regional power grids are in place—11 shared power lines currently run between six pairs of ASEAN countries—but they need to better handle the intermittency of renewable energy. Making progress on cross-border integration is essential especially as Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia are energy importers.
Because the climate disasters being witnessed today are the result of carbon accumulation in the atmosphere which will stay in place for decades, the priority for climate adaptation is patently clear. Adaptation efforts need to be multi-faceted, ranging from expenditure on infrastructure such as drainage systems and coastal embankments to spending on social sectors including health and safety nets. There is also a real need to call on stakeholders to work across their traditional sectoral boundaries, and not in isolated silos.
Higher allocations of funding are needed to deal with disasters, but these funds ought to be approved in advance in order not to lose time with financing approvals during moments of crisis. Equally important is the efficient and timely deployment of funds, with ample monitoring and evaluation of its effectiveness on the ground to help improve performance.
The spate of weather extremes confirms scientific predictions of the hand of human-made climate change in endangering lives and livelihoods. As Southeast Asia and other regions are busy dealing with the immediate fallout of soaring temperatures and deadly floods, it’s imperative they also prepare for worst-case scenarios down the road. To change this future direction for the better, public opinion needs to support disaster prevention and preparedness, not just disaster relief and rehabilitation.
Vinod Thomas is Associate Senior Fellow, The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore and author of the new book Risk and Resilience in the Era of Climate Change, Palgrave Macmillan, April 4, 2023.
Violence in Myanmar expected to worsen as civilians given right to bear arms
Ms Moe Thuzar, senior fellow and coordinator of the Myanmar Studies Programme at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, said questions remain over who actually needs to use guns in the country.
“Looking back at past practice (and) past precedents, we do see that the people who were holding arms were either those that were very much close to or connected to the military authorities, or people who were military personnel or ex-military personnel, veterans and so on,” she noted.
For locals, the new policy adds another layer of fear to their lives. Many said there is no rule of law, and they feel unsafe even when doing basic daily chores such as going to the market.
Occasional attacks and assassinations on supporters of the junta have also occurred, even before the new gun law was introduced.
An urban guerrilla group, for instance, claimed responsibility for the death of an elections official in Yangon in April this year. He was a witness in the electoral fraud case surrounding ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Covid inpatients increase amid concerns about children’s development
The number of Covid-19 inpatients rose last week while health authorities encouraged vaccination for young children to protect their development.
Dr Tares Krassanairawiwong, director-general of the Department of Disease Control, said that from May 28 to June 3 there were 3,085 Covid-19 inpatients, up 4% from the previous week.
On average there were about 440 Covid-19 inpatients a day last week, up from 424 in the previous week.
However, the number of inpatients with lung inflammation dropped to 386 from 425. Among them, 243 were dependent on ventilators, down from 253.
Meanwhile, fatalities related to Covid-19 rose. Last week there were 68 new fatalities, up by 62% from 42 in the previous week.
Dr Tares said that elderly people, those with underlying diseases and pregnant women formed 97% of the new deaths and they were insufficiently vaccinated against Covid-19.
He encouraged people to receive annual vaccinations to prevent serious illness and death in case they contract the disease.
He said this year children younger than one year old had the highest rate of Covid-19 illness, 1,581 per 100,000 people, followed by those aged 70 years old and over, (647 per 100,000).
Dr Tares recommended parents bring young children for Covid-19 vaccinations. He said there were fewer undesireable symptoms among the young than among older children, and Covid-19 vaccines had proven internationally to be very safe for recipients.
There could be a fever for a few days, but no severe or dangerous symptoms in young vaccine recipients, he said.
Prof Dr Kulkalaya Chokpaibulkit, a paediatrician at Siriraj Hospital, said vaccination cut the risks of long Covid symptoms and multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C).
Unvaccinated children with underlying illnesses could develop severe and prolonged symptoms which might affect their development, she said.
China’s May imports to fall again, exports slip into red
BEIJING: China’s imports are expected to have contracted in May, despite a low base last year as a lockdown in Shanghai brought the country’s biggest port to a standstill, while exports likely fell for the first time in three months, a Reuters poll showed. Inbound shipments to the world’s second-largestContinue Reading
US Navy shows Chinese warship’s ‘unsafe interaction’ near Taiwan
China has not commented directly on the US criticism of the encounter, and its foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday. On Saturday night, China’s military rebuked the US and Canada for “deliberately provoking risk” with the rare joint sailing. Chinese military commentator SongContinue Reading
United Nations ‘alarmed’ by Tiananmen anniversary detentions in Hong Kong
“External forces” including the United States should uphold international law and stop “futile political manipulation” over Hong Kong to contain China, a ministry spokesperson said. Restrictions on speech and public protests in the administrative region of Hong Kong have stifled what were once mass candlelight vigils marking the anniversary ofContinue Reading
Judiciary and the quest for absolute fairness
Forgive me if I begin by stating the obvious fact that as yet, no political system devised by mankind, or indeed womankind, is flawless.
Autocrats will, by definition, disagree with this proposition. The world has yet to encounter a Divine Dictator; though many volunteer themselves, none are called.
Democrats, like Winston Churchill, contend that despite its faults, theirs is the best model.
The one feature of a liberal democracy that commends itself to many if not most of those subject to its rule is the power gifted to an independent judiciary to test the fairness of the measures taken to govern the electorate, the process known as judicial review.
The concept of systemic checks and balances within a system of government founded on popular election is essential if those elected into power are to be restrained from leveraging their elected status into absolute power.
I fully recognize that there are political philosophies that believe their concept of government is beyond question or doubt and, therefore, that the mechanism of judicial review is irrelevant.
Pure Marxist theory is that the law will wither away of its own accord within a communist society.
There are, however, countless examples, drawn from countries as disparate as Hungary, Pakistan, Ireland and Israel, whose respective judiciaries regularly rule against the validity of both legislative and executive action, usually because such acts are outside their legitimate powers.
Empowered politicians detest these constraints.
Foiled from abusing or exceeding their power, these “servants of the people” rail against the judges, complaining, “Who are these unelected figures who have the temerity to challenge those chosen by the people to rule?”
A good example of the reaction of politicians to having their wings clipped was former prime minister Boris Johnson’s poodle newspaper, the Daily Mail, in 2017 labeling three English Court of Appeal judges as “Enemies of the People.”
This politically inspired attack on the judiciary resulted from Johnson’s attempt to bypass Parliament in order to trigger Article 50 and exit the European Union. The judges had ruled that the government had to gain the consent of Parliament before it could take such a step.
The absurd irony of Johnson’s failed attempt to use the prerogative powers of the Crown to evade parliamentary scrutiny was that the sovereignty of parliament was a central plank of the Brexit campaigners.
It is too readily overlooked that the English judges did not initiate this ruling themselves but did so in response to an application by a member of the public for judicial review of the government’s proposed course of action.
What is regularly overlooked or ignored by those who want to dispense with judicial oversight of executive excesses is that the court tests the integrity of the very process by which the these actions are reached; the judiciary does not venture into the field of government policy.
The ambit of judicial review is strictly limited to analyzing the decision-making process. So if material facts or matters have been ignored, or irrelevant issues have been taken into consideration, the court will, more often than not, declare that the decision is fundamentally flawed and nullify it.
An even more blatant error is where the executive has acted as judge and jury in a fact-finding exercise in which its own acts are challenged.
The essence of the judicial tests against which the judges measure the integrity of a government’s decision-making process is founded in absolute concepts of fairness.
So it is that governments seeking to constrain the review powers of their respective judiciaries are set on a path to untrammeled rule.
This is usually a prelude to the removal of any obstacle to wielding absolute power.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stirred up a hornet’s nest of protest when, together with his extremist partners, he proposed not only to curtail the Israeli judiciary’s powers but to exercise close political control over judicial appointments.
Hungary’s Victor Orban has been gerrymandering the country’s judiciary with the same objective.
Perhaps I have overlooked something but, to my mind, testing the validity of institutional acts or omissions by reference to elementary concepts of fairness is, or certainly ought to be, of universal application. After all, these are absolute standards.
Set against this yardstick, the endeavors of leaders to straitjacket constitutional courts, or populate them with judges who tailor their judgments to serve the leader’s fashion, evidences who are the true enemies of the people.
History is replete with exemplars of this abuse of power by those elected into the highest office: Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler and their latter-day legatees such as Vladimir Putin, Victor Orban and Benjamin Netanyahu, to name but a few.
No liberal democracy is safe from political ploys to hamstring judicial oversight.
The constitutional scholar Gautam Bhatia points to the unprecedented frequency and intensity of the attacks by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on the Indian Supreme Court’s ruling that there is a basic structure of the constitution beyond Parliament’s competence to amend.
As Bhatia expresses it, this structure is “widely perceived to be an important bulwark against a totalitarian evisceration of the constitution.”
The United States, the putative leader of Western democracy, has populated its Supreme Court with jurists who identify with the ideology of the more extreme faction of one of its two dominant political parties. Is this any less egregious than what Netanyahu is trying to do in Israel or Modi in India?
Beware those who would shutter the lamp of justice.
Neville Sarony QC is a noted Hong Kong lawyer.
Odisha train accident: Indian Railways seek police probe into crash
Getty ImagesIndia’s railway ministry has recommended that the country’s top detective agency should investigate the deadly crash that killed 275 people.
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced the decision but did not give more details.
Railways-led investigations have already started and preliminary reports say a signal fault led to the crash.
The three-train collision on Friday night has been described as India’s worst rail accident this century.
More than 1,000 suffered injuries and were taken to hospitals. Some families are still searching for their loved ones.
It’s not clear why the Railway Board, the ministry’s top decision making body, has recommended a separate investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) when other inquiries have already started.
The CBI investigates high profile criminal causes, including serious financial frauds and murders.
Mr Vaishnaw said on Sunday that “the root cause” of the accident and people responsible for the “criminal act” had been identified.
He added that a “change in electronic interlocking” was the likely cause of the accident. The minister urged people to wait for the final report.
A report by the Commissioner of Railway Safety would be made public soon and it would reveal the cause, he said.
Meanwhile, the railways said on Sunday that the Coromandel Express’s engine and coaches crashed into a goods train due to a signal fault and a “change in electronic interlocking”.
In railway signalling the electronic interlocking system sets routes for each train in a set area, ensuring the safe movement of trains along the track.
The impact of the crash threw coaches of the Coromandel Express onto a third track and they rammed into the rear carriages of the Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express that was coming down the line at a high speed.
More than 3,000 passengers are thought to have been on board the two passenger trains.
Atul Karwal, chief of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), said the force of the collision left several coaches crushed. Rescuers had to cut through the wreckage to reach the passengers.
Hundreds of ambulances, doctors, nurses and rescue personnel were sent to the scene and worked for 18 hours to rescue passengers and pull out bodies.
On Sunday night, Mr Vaishnaw said train movement had been restored on the railway tracks where the accident took place.
Reports say several passengers are still missing.
Opposition leaders have called on Mr Vaishnaw to take responsibility for the tragedy and resign.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has responded by asking them not to politicise the accident.
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Afghan women face ‘pandemic of suicidal thoughts’
Getty Images“I just want someone to hear my voice. I’m in pain, and I’m not the only one,” an Afghan university student tells us, blinking back tears.
“Most of the girls in my class have had suicidal thoughts. We are all suffering from depression and anxiety. We have no hope.”
The young woman, in her early twenties, tried to end her own life four months ago, after female students were barred from attending university by the Taliban government in December last year. She is now being treated by a psychologist.
Her words offer an insight into a less visible yet urgent health crisis facing Afghanistan.
“We have a pandemic of suicidal thoughts in Afghanistan. The situation is the worst ever, and the world rarely thinks or talks about it,” says psychologist Dr Amal.
“When you read the news, you read about the hunger crisis, but no-one talks about mental health. It’s like people are being slowly poisoned. Day by day, they’re losing hope.”
Note: The BBC has changed or withheld the names of all interviewees in this piece, to protect them.
Dr Amal tells us she received 170 calls for help within two days of the announcement that women would be banned from universities. Now she gets roughly seven to 10 new calls for help every day. Most of her patients are girls and young women.
In Afghanistan’s deeply patriarchal society, one worn out by four decades of war, the UN estimates that one in two people – most of them women – suffered from psychological distress even before the Taliban takeover in 2021. But experts have told the BBC that things are now worse than ever before because of the Taliban government’s clampdown on women’s freedoms, and the economic crisis in the country.
It’s extremely hard to get people to talk about suicide, but six families have agreed to tell us their stories.
Nadir is one of them. He tells us his daughter took her own life on the first day of the new school term in March this year.
“Until that day, she had believed that schools would eventually reopen for girls. She had been sure of it. But when that didn’t happen, she couldn’t cope and took her own life,” he says. “She loved school. She was smart, thoughtful and wanted to study and serve our country. When they closed schools, she became extremely distressed and would cry a lot.”
It is evident that Nadir is in pain as he speaks.
“Our life has been destroyed. Nothing means anything to me anymore. I’m at the lowest I’ve ever been. My wife is very disturbed. She can’t bear to be in our home where our daughter died.”
We have connected his family and others quoted in this piece to a mental health professional.
The father of a woman in her early twenties told us what he believes was the reason behind his daughter’s suicide.
“She wanted to become a doctor. When schools were closed, she was distressed and upset,” he says.
“But it was after she wasn’t allowed to sit for the university entrance exam, that’s when she lost all hope. It’s an unbearable loss,” he adds, then pauses abruptly and begins to cry.
The other stories we hear are similar – girls and young women unable to cope with their lives, and futures coming to a grinding halt.
We speak to a teacher, Meher, who tells us she has tried to take her own life twice.
“The Taliban closed universities for women, so I lost my job. I used to be the breadwinner of my family. And now I can’t bear the expenses. That really affected me,” she says. “Because I was forced to stay at home, I was being pressured to get married. All the plans I had for my future were shattered. I felt totally disoriented, with no goals or hope, and that’s why I tried to end my life.”
We started looking into this crisis because we saw multiple articles in local news portals reporting suicides from different parts of the country.
“The situation is catastrophic and critical. But we are not allowed to record or access suicide statistics. I can definitely say though that you can barely find someone who is not suffering from a mental illness,” says Dr Shaan, a psychiatrist who works at a public hospital in Afghanistan.
A study done in Herat province by the Afghanistan Centre for Epidemiological Studies, released in March this year, has shown that two-thirds of Afghan adolescents reported symptoms of depression. The UN has raised an alarm over “widespread mental health issues and escalating accounts of suicides”.
The Taliban say they are not recording suicide numbers, and they didn’t respond to questions about a surge in figures. Because of the stigma attached to it, many families do not report a suicide.
In the absence of data, we’ve tried to assess the scale of the crisis through conversations with dozens of people.
“Staying at home without an education or a future, it makes me feels ridiculous. I feel exhausted and indifferent to everything. It’s like nothing matters anymore,” a teenage girl tells us, tears rolling down her face.
She attempted to take her own life. We meet her in the presence of her doctor, and her mother, who doesn’t let her daughter out of her sight.
We ask them why they want to speak to us.
“Nothing worse than this can happen, that’s why I’m speaking out,” the girl says. “And I thought maybe if I speak out, something will change. If the Taliban are going to stay in power, then I think they should be officially recognised. If that happens, I believe they would reopen schools.”
Psychologist Dr Amal says that while women have been hit harder, men are also affected.
“In Afghanistan, as a man, you are brought up to believe that you should be powerful,” she says. “But right now Afghan men can’t raise their voice. They can’t provide financially for their families. It really affects them.
“And unfortunately, when men have suicidal thoughts, they are more likely to succeed in their attempts than women because of how they plan them.”
In such an environment, we ask, what advice does she give her patients?
“The best way of helping others or yourself is not isolating yourself. You can go and talk to your friends, go and see your neighbours, form a support team for yourself, for instance your mother, father, siblings or friends,” she says.
“I ask them who’s your role model. For instance, if Nelson Mandela is someone you look up to, he spent 26 years in jail, but because of his values, he survived and did something for people. So that’s how I try to give them hope and resilience.”
Additional reporting by Imogen Anderson and Sanjay Ganguly
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21 December 2022
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24 November 2022
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