A tribal woman in India's Andaman Islands who was paid just two rupees, or four cents, in compensation for damage to her coconut groves by the December tsunami has angrily returned the check from the local government, an official acknowledged. "Naturally, she is very angry," said the official, Sailen Singh Parihar, deputy administrator of Nancowrie Island in the Andamans chain. He called the assessment "absolutely absurd" and said he had ordered a review of claims on the islands. He rejected complaints that many other survivors had also received checks for tiny sums of money from the local administration but said he would investigate. (AFP [1])
Now that the world media have moved on, tsunami victims are being shafted [2] throughout the impacted regions. The hidden story of the tsunami (reported in WW4 REPORT #106 [3]) is how the disaster was exploited by regional governments to usurp indigenous peoples of their lands.
