CANDLELIGHT, TRAIN VIGILS
Indonesia suffered the highest death toll, with more than 160,000 people killed along its western coast.
“I hope we will never experience that ever again,” said Nilawati, a 60-year-old Indonesian housewife who lost her son and mother in the tragedy and was attending Thursday’s ceremonies.
“I learned the devastation of losing a child, a grief I can’t explain with words. It feels like it just happened yesterday. Whenever I am reminded of it, it feels like all the blood rushes out of my body.”
The disaster also ended a decades-long separatist conflict in Aceh, with a peace deal between rebels and Jakarta struck less than a year later.
In Sri Lanka, where more than 35,000 people perished, survivors and relatives were to gather to remember around 1,000 victims who died when waves derailed a passenger train.
The mourners will board the restored Ocean Queen Express and head to Peraliya – the exact spot where it was ripped from the tracks, around 90km south of Colombo.
A brief religious ceremony will be held with relatives of the dead there while Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Muslim ceremonies are also organised to commemorate victims across the South Asian island nation.
In Thailand, where half of the more than 5,000 dead were foreign tourists, unofficial vigils were expected to accompany a government memorial ceremony.
At a hotel in Phang Nga province, there will host a tsunami exhibition, a documentary screening and introductions by government and UN bodies on disaster preparedness and resilience measures.
Nearly 300 people were killed as far away as Somalia, as well as more than 100 in the Maldives and dozens in Malaysia and Myanmar.
“My children, wife, father, mother, all of my siblings were swept away,” said Indonesian survivor and fisherman Baharuddin Zainun, 70.
“The same tragedy was felt by others as well. We feel the same feelings.”
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/tsunami-memorials-indian-ocean-20-years-indonesia-4826221
