World marks tsunami anniversary with prayers
World marks tsunami anniversary with prayers
Agencies, Car Nicobar, India/Stockholm
Families of the tsunami victims across the world marked the anniversary of the disaster on Monday with candlelight vigils and somber memorial ceremonies.
India offered tearful tributes to the thousands killed in last year's tsunami with countrywide memorial services, silent marches and beachside ceremonies.
On the palm-fringed island of Car Nicobar, shattered by the Dec. 26 tragedy, the military unveiled a memorial while thousands of civilian survivors, mostly Nicobarese tribespeople, left their homes early to remember those washed away within seconds when the giant waves struck.
Women thronged Nicobar's beaches to pray for the sea to remain calm as priests called on villagers to gather at those churches still standing in remembrance of the dead.
India lost more than 10,700 people confirmed killed, with 5,600 others listed as missing, as villages were wiped out along its southern coast and in the Andaman and Nicobar island chain.
It suffered material damage estimated by the United Nations at US$2.5 billion.
In Nagapattinam, India's worst-hit district in the southern state of Tamil Nadu where more than 6,000 people died, each village found its own way to remember the destruction.
The entire district observed a minute's silence at 9:17 a.m. at local time, the moment the waves slammed into the shore.
In Thailand, Thousands of Thais and foreigners gathered on beaches across southern Thailand to mark the anniversary of last year's tsunami as Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra led a nation in mourning the victims of the disaster.
"It is not often that we have the opportunity to be part of a historic moment that will be remembered for generations to come," Thaksin said as he laid the foundation stone for a tsunami memorial here.
Around 5,400 people were killed in Thailand alone -- 2,436 of them foreign tourists from 37 countries -- and another 637 are listed as missing.
The ceremony came at the end of a day of commemorations throughout southern Thailand that saw Thais and foreigners come together to remember the dead.
At Bang Nieng in the worst hit province of Phang Nga, hundreds lined up earlier in the day to sign remembrance books in the shadow of a police patrol boat that was washed one kilometer inland by the killer waves and now stands as a memorial to the catastrophe.
Many of the messages were brief, with one reading, "We miss you every day", while another simply asked "Why?!"
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka remembered the Dec. 26 tsunami victims with prayers, flowers and a two-minute silence as survivors, officials and foreign diplomats gathered in a village that suffered the country's largest loss of life.
Butchers hung up their knives to show respect for life while Buddhist monks prepared to chant through the night on the first anniversary of the disaster.
In the southern village of Peraliya -- where the raging waves swept a passenger train from its tracks, killing nearly 2,000 - ordinary Sri Lankans and international diplomats joined President Mahinda Rajapakse to honor the country's more than 35,000 dead and missing, the second-highest count after Indonesia.
Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Christian clergymen, representing Sri Lanka's four main religions, opened the ceremonies with prayers. A two-minute silence followed at 9:30 a.m. local time -- the time the waves hit -- and a temple bell rang nine times. Rajapakse placed flowers on a monument.
In Sweden, one of the hardest-hit Western countries, national broadcaster SVT dedicated all programming on its second channel to the anniversary. The special memorial program started with live coverage from a vigil at a Thai beach where dozens of vacationing Swedes died a year ago.
"Even the sky cries with us today," Bishop Lennart Koskinen said in Swedish as a light rain fell on the mourners gathered in Khao Lak, a beach resort that was pounded by the tsunami.
Candlelight vigils were planned later in the day throughout Sweden. The royal family and Prime Minister Goran Persson were to attend a one-hour vigil in Stockholm, the capital.
Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds, who has been harshly criticized for not reacting more quickly to the disaster, said she would not attend out of respect for the victims.
More than 500 Swedes were killed in the tsunami - the biggest trauma the safe and prosperous country has experienced since the sinking of the passenger ferry Estonia in the Baltic Sea in 1994. The government faced heavy criticism for failing to grasp the scope of the disaster at an early stage and mount an effective response.
Germany honored the 534 Germans identified as lost in the tsunami. Fifteen still are missing.
"None of them is forgotten," Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said late on Sunday in a statement.