Two questions about the 2004 Tsunami

April 14, 2007 10:40 AM

Tsunami-filter: I have a two part question about the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004. One involves the BBC/HBO miniseries "Tsunami: The Aftermath," and the other involves the guerilla warfare going on in Indonesia at the time.

Okay, first question: In the BBC/HBO miniseries "Tsunami: The Aftermath" there is a scientist character named Dr. Pravat Meeko who supposedly wrote a report in 1993 which predicted the coastline's vulnerability to a tsunami, but his report was ignored due to developers' connections in office. Is this character based on a real person/real report? And if so, where can I find more information?

The second part of this question is: have there been any articles about the Free Aceh movement and the guerilla fighting/civil war in Indonesia who (at least temporarily) laid down their weapons following the Tsunami? I'm looking for in-depth articles about specific people involved, fighters, politicians, etc. My google-fu has failed me.

Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks.

posted by np312 to society & culture (5 comments total)

I don't know if it will help but there is this (PDF) article from the International Crisis Group outlining how the process started before the tsunami and continued to the deal reached in 2005.
posted by fair_game at 11:22 AM on April 14, 2007

This might be helpful also.
posted by loosemouth at 12:09 PM on April 14, 2007

Democracy Now! has been covering Aceh for years. A quick search shows many shows that have covered it. If you're into the podcast thing, this might be helpful.
posted by tom_g at 4:03 PM on April 14, 2007

Regarding Free Aceh (stating the obvious perhaps) but there's a short wikipedia bit here

Article here about the nature of the fighting with commentary both on the actions of Free Acheh and the Indonesian forces. It's an interesting article - I don't know enough about military matters to know whether the author knows what he's talking about although it has the ring of truth.

A 2001 article from Time magazine discusses the involvement that Exxon has in the region including allegations that they were (at least) complicit in torturing and killing Acehenese. A court case arising in the USA following these allegations seems to have been succesfully pushed under the wheels of 'the war on Terror' by Exxon's lawyers.
posted by southof40 at 5:23 AM on April 15, 2007

Answering your first question, the HBO/BBC docudrama may have based the Meeko character on Smith Dharmasaroja who issued a report in 1998 warning about the certainty of a tsunami.

Today, he's in the news for warning Bangkok may underwater by 2025.
posted by birdherder at 7:39 AM on May 3, 2007