ASIA / PACIFIC
Page 4 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
April 6, 2015
Cambodia inaugurates memorial
at Khmer Rouge genocide museum
RELIC RETRIEVAL. A Chinese Buddha statue is seen at the Hun-
garian Natural History Museum in Budapest, Hungary. Chinese authorities
are gathering evidence that a statue that was displayed at a mummy ex-
hibit in Hungary belongs to a village in southeastern China, ahead of pos-
sible diplomatic talks to retrieve the treasure, according to an official. The
investigation followed a report by the official Xinhua News Agency that the
mummy statue featured at the MummyWorld Exhibition in Budapest was
stolen from Yangchun village in Fujian province in 1995. (AP Photo/
Xinhua, Attila Volgyi)
China seeks evidence
for possible return
of mummy statute
BEIJING (AP) — Chinese authorities are gathering
evidence that a statue that was displayed at a mummy
exhibit in Hungary belongs to a village in southeastern
China, ahead of possible diplomatic talks to retrieve the
treasure, according to an official.
The investigation followed a report by the official
Xinhua News Agency that the mummy statue featured at
the MummyWorld Exhibition in Budapest was stolen
from Yangchun village in Fujian province in 1995.
Yu Shengfu, an official at a cultural heritage bureau in
Fujian, said that the conclusion is preliminary and that
Chinese authorities are gathering more proof, including
photos, to show that the piece owned by a private Dutch
collector belongs to the Chinese village.
The mummy-containing statue has been pulled from
the exhibit, which runs through May 17 in Budapest.
The Hungarian Natural History Museum, the host of
the exhibit, said the piece was removed and sent back to
the Netherlands upon request of a lending partner but did
not give further details.
The statue is believed to contain the mummified body of
a Yangchun man who later became a well-respected
Buddhist monk during China’s Song Dynasty (960-1279),
and the statue had been worshipped since then in the
village temple, Xinhua said.
Yangchun villagers, who have kept the statue’s hat and
clothes since the 1995 theft, “burst into tears” and “lit
fireworks” after seeing the statue on television, Xinhua
said.
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EASY
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# 8
#86727
Instructions: Fill in the grid so that the digits 1
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Solution to
last week’s
puzzle
Puzzle #84916 (Hard)
All solutions available at
<www.sudoku.com>.
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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) —
Cambodian officials have inaugu-
rated a memorial at the Tuol Sleng
Genocide Museum to remember more
than 12,000 people tortured at the
site when it was a Khmer Rouge
prison.
Buddhist monks chanted prayers
at a ceremony at the museum, a
former high school that the Khmer
Rouge converted into a prison after
taking power in 1975.
Deputy Prime Minister Sok An
presided over the ceremony, which
was attended by representatives
from the United Nations and a
U.N.-backed tribunal trying former
Khmer Rouge officials.
He said the 20-foot-high memorial,
designed like a Buddhist stupa, will
“serve as an educational tool for the
next generations to remember and
prevent the return of such a dark
regime.”
An estimated 1.7 million people
died as a result of the Khmer Rouge’s
radical policies from 1975 to 1979.
Tuol Sleng was one of a number of
torture and execution centers. The
tribunal has identified 12,272 victims
who passed through its gates, but the
actual number is believed to be
around 16,000. Virtually all were
taken to the prison after being
tortured and killed elsewhere. Only a
handful survived.
The memorial replaces a similar
GENOCIDE MUSEUM. Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Sok An, center, prays with a Bud-
dhist monk, left, during the opening ceremony of a memorial in Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in
Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The memorial built at the museum, which remembers at least 12,000
people tortured and killed there during the radical Khmer Rouge regime, was officially inaugurated
last month. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
one that disintegrated inside the Tuol
Sleng complex and is part of a
renovation of the museum that began
in 2010.
Sok An rejected criticism from
human-rights groups that the
government is interfering in the
Khmer Rouge tribunal. “I wish to
reiterate that the government will
not intervene, will not interfere with
the internal affairs of the court,” he
said.
Prime Minister Hun Sen warned
recently that adding new defendants
could incite former Khmer Rouge
members to start a civil war, and that
the court’s investigations had “almost
gone beyond the limit.” He has made
similar comments on many occasions.
Last month, the tribunal indicted
two more suspects — former Khmer
Rouge navy chief Meas Muth and for-
mer district commander Im Chaem.
They were charged with homicide
and crimes against humanity,
including enslavement and persecu-
tion on political and ethnic grounds.
Two of the group’s top surviving
leaders received life sentences last
August for crimes against humanity.
Japan opts for massive, costly sea wall to fend off tsunamis
By Elaine Kurtenbach
AP Business Writer
S
ENDAI, Japan — More than four years after a
towering tsunami ravaged much of Japan’s
northeastern coast, efforts to fend off future
disasters are focusing on a nearly 250-mile chain of
cement sea walls, at places nearly five stories high.
Opponents of the 820 billion yen ($6.8 billion) plan
argue that the massive concrete barriers will damage
marine ecology and scenery, hinder vital fisheries, and
actually do little to protect residents who are mostly
supposed to relocate to higher ground. Those in favor say
the sea walls are a necessary evil and one that will provide
some jobs, at least for a time.
In the northern fishing port of Osabe, Kazutoshi
Musashi chafes at the 41-foot-high concrete barrier
blocking his view of the sea.
“The reality is that it looks like the wall of a jail,” said
Musashi, 46, who lived on the seaside before the tsunami
struck Osabe and has moved inland since.
Pouring concrete for public works is a staple strategy for
the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its backers in big
business and construction, and local officials tend to go
along with such plans.
The paradox of such projects, experts say, is that while
they may reduce some damage, they can foster
complacency. That can be a grave risk along coastlines
vulnerable to tsunamis, storm surges, and other natural
disasters. At least some of the 18,500 people who died or
went missing in the 2011 disasters failed to heed
warnings to escape in time.
Tsuneaki Iguchi was mayor of Iwanuma, a town just
south of the region’s biggest city, Sendai, when the
tsunami triggered by a magnitude-9 earthquake just off
the coast inundated half of its area.
A 24-foot-high sea wall built years earlier to help stave
off erosion of Iwanuma’s beaches slowed the wall of water,
as did stands of tall, thin pine trees planted along the
coast. But the tsunami still swept up to three miles inland.
Passengers and staff watched from the upper floors and
roof of the airport as the waves carried off cars, buildings,
and aircraft, smashing most homes in densely populated
suburbs not far from the beach.
The city repaired the broken sea walls but doesn’t plan
to make them any taller. Instead, Iguchi was one of the
first local officials to back a plan championed by former
Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa to plant mixed forests
along the coasts on tall mounds of soil or rubble, to help
create a living “green wall” that would persist long after
the concrete of the bigger, manmade structures has
CEMENTING THE COASTLINE. A Shinto shrine gate remains
standing on a hill while sea walls are built in the waterfront area of Riku-
zentakata, Iwate prefecture, northeastern Japan. Four years after a tower-
ing tsunami ravaged much of Japan’s northeastern coast, efforts to fend
off future disasters are focusing on a nearly 250-mile chain of cement sea
walls, at places nearly five stories high. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
crumbled.
“We don’t need the sea wall to be higher. What we do
need is for everyone to evacuate,” Iguchi said.
“The safest thing is for people to live on higher ground
and for people’s homes and their workplaces to be in
separate locations. If we do that, we don’t need to have a
‘Great Wall,’” he said.
While the lack of basic infrastructure can be
catastrophic in developing countries, too heavy a reliance
on such safeguards can lead communities to be too
complacent at times, says Margareta Wahlstrom, head of
the U.N.’s Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
“There’s a bit of an overbelief in technology as a
solution, even though everything we have learned
demonstrates that people’s own insights and instincts are
really what makes a difference, and technology in fact
makes us a bit more vulnerable,” Wahlstrom said in an
interview ahead of a recent conference in Sendai convened
to draft a new framework for reducing disaster risks.
In the steelmaking town of Kamaishi, more than 1,000
people died in the 2011 tsunami, but most school students
fled to safety zones immediately after the earthquake,
thanks to training by a civil engineering professor,
Toshitaka Katada.
The risk is not confined to Japan, said Maarten van
Aalst, director of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate
Center, who sees this in the attitudes of fellow Dutch
people who trust in their low-lying country’s defenses
against the sea.
“The public impression of safety is so high, they would
have no idea what to do in case of a catastrophe,” he said.
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