Psychics give up the ghost as hope fades for Aceh's tsunami missing

Psychics give up the ghost as hope fades for Aceh's tsunami missing

Barry Neild, Agence France Presse/Banda Aceh

As tattered posters asking for news of missing relatives begin to
fade in Indonesia's Aceh, people are turning to desperate means
to find tsunami survivors but with even psychics drawing a blank,
there is now little hope.

Seven weeks on from the disaster, well over 100,000 are
officially listed as missing, although authorities admit that
most included in that figure will eventually be declared dead.

"It is getting less and less likely that they will find anyone
as every day passes," said Prawoto Prass, Aceh coordinator for
charity Pusaka Indonesia which is working with the UN to try to
locate missing parents and children.

Prass, whose group has 17 missing person registration posts
across Aceh, says it has 2,800 parents listed as looking for
children and 294 children seeking their families.

At the main post in a camp for the displaced outside a
television studio in the provincial city Banda Aceh, there have
been just 16 families reunited since five days after the December
26 disaster, Prass said.

"But some people refuse to give up, they come here and say 'I
strongly believe that my kids are alive'. We can tell them
nothing, except please be patient."

For many, the desperation has driven them to seek advice from
local mystics -- a leap of faith for Acehnese, whose strict
Muslim culture forbids such beliefs.

Shaman Abdul Hafidh Alfarius Albagdad uses photos and names of
the missing to try to pinpoint their location, tapping into a
supernatural gift he says runs in his family. In a purple sarong
and sporting long hair and fingernails, he looks the part.

The 29-year-old has received a steady stream of anxious
callers in his home in Tanah Abee village, 40 kilometres (25
miles) east of Banda Aceh. They offer him roughly five dollars
apiece for his psychic services.

"It is exhausting for me, but I can contact the spirit of the
person they are looking for and find out where they are," he told
AFP. "But this long after the tsunami, it is too late, I can only
tell if they are alive or dead."

Rusani, 25, who lost her three daughters when the waves swept
through her village of Krung Cut, dragging her youngest child
from her arms, is among "thousands" of people to have consulted
the supernatural world.

"You should have come to see me sooner, now I cannot find
them," Albagdad told Rusani, who said that until now she could
not afford the transport to leave her temporary home in Banda
Aceh and travel to his village.

Instead, she spent the first week after the disaster searching
the wreckage around her home, checking the corpses of hundreds of
children, dreading the discovery of her own among them.

The mystic, who claims he predicted the tsunami six months ago
and warns of another disaster that will strike Indonesia's
capital Jakarta, did tell Rusani that her middle daughter, six
year-old Zahrianti, had survived.

"I knew it, I always knew she was alive. He has confirmed what
I thought and given me more hope," she said, adding that she
would once again begin trawling dozens of camps for homeless
people to look for her child.

In the Lambaro district outside Banda Aceh, another "clever"
person, as those with so-called sixth sense are known in Aceh,
Nek (grandmother) Mu said her ability to find disaster survivors
had also faded with time.

"I see about 30 people a day, all looking for their relatives.
At first I would be able to say where they were but now I can
just say 'dead or alive'. The more questions they ask, the less
answers I can give them."

Ahmad Humam Hamid, a prominent Aceh sociologist, said although
people in many parts of Indonesia consulted mystics, for Aceh's
staunch Muslims to do so would indicate desperation and deep
trauma.

"It is forbidden under Islam but I think people have sunk to
such a level of despair and want so badly to see their husband,
wife or children that they will talk to anyone who can tell them
what they want to hear, even using magic.

"From a sociological point of view, this is a group of people
who are beyond hope."

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GetAFP 2.10 -- FEB 14, 2005 08:07:19