3/11 One Year Later: Government Absence, NGO Authoritarianism, and Thoughts on the Kony2012 Affair
Exactly one year ago today, on a small island on the other side of the world, Mother Earth suddenly unleashed her fury. The wealthy, peace-loving, docile residents of the island were thrown into sheer unprepared chaos, running, hiding, and crying in confusion and fear as buildings shook and fell all around them. All semblance of a civilized society disappeared in an instant. What awaited the shell-shocked populace was a scene seemingly from Armageddon.
A world-leading city was pitched into complete darkness as all forms of public transportation ground to a halt. People blindly and mindlessly walked through the streets now jam-packed with non-moving cars and buses, carrying scared passengers eager to flee from wherever they perceived as the "center of danger." In a country known for convenience, every store from supermarkets to the little corner shops were completely devoid of all products and liveliness.
Unfortunately, the misfortunes that was to befall the little island nation was just getting started. From the big waves in the Northeast to the still-unknown extent of nuclear disaster at Fukushima, the series of events since the Quake only added to the deep and very much permanent emotional scars of the physical survivors. Even as life slowly crawled back into normalcy in the couple of weeks after 3/11, something was still amiss and caused for endless worries...
That missing element, perhaps, was the conspicuous absence of government. In TVs and radio broadcasts in the immediate aftermath of 3/11, the government officials did not spare any energy is reassuring that the Fukushima problem is no cause for worries, and that the government is very much on the ground to repair the damages. Quickly enough, a high-profiled five-year rebuilding package in the hundreds of billions of US dollars were announced for implementation.
Yet, today, the absence of government is even more highlighted, contrasted with its big words a year earlier. Administrative officials continue to bicker on how rebuilding will be planned, executed, and earmarked funding spent, while the victims of the tsunami and Fukushima continued to suffer. What resulted was essentially a vacuum of not just executive power, but trust, a fundamental lack of hope among the people with regard to future recovery.
In this vacuum, a new force has effectively replaced the government. Handing out food, building shelters, releasing disaster information...the usual tasks of government emergency handling was taken up by NGOs, ranging from likes of International Red Cross to the millions of brand-new ones set up by locals disgruntled by government inaction. They collectively have now effectively wrestled away control of the disaster areas from their government-appointed bureaucrats.
The victims of the disasters, helpless in grasping any sense of optimism within their current situations, were and still are very much bound to unconditionally accept the increasing power and authority of the NGOs. With absence of government, they had no alternatives. They rallied behind the ideas and actions of the NGOs, giving them almost absolute power with little objective assessments of their behaviors. Logical enough, one simply does not bite the hand that does the feeding.
While some positive effects of the NGOs are not to be doubted (the contributions they made in the recovery of Japan's disaster zones should definitely be appreciated). But at the same time, the complete lack of check-and-balance on their actions in absence of government authorities should not simply be accepted as something appropriate. NGOs, perhaps even more than any other organizations shoved into extraordinary situations, are bound to make short-sighted decisions.
The proliferation of the recent PR campaign against Joseph Kony is a case in point. By shaming various governments from the US to Uganda in admitting that they have ignored righteous calls to intervene militarily to put an end to the humanitarian disaster, the NGOs are doing exactly the same thing they are doing in Japan's disaster areas: to justify their unilateral and unchecked establishment of absolute authority over areas where government have unfortunately disappeared.
A world-leading city was pitched into complete darkness as all forms of public transportation ground to a halt. People blindly and mindlessly walked through the streets now jam-packed with non-moving cars and buses, carrying scared passengers eager to flee from wherever they perceived as the "center of danger." In a country known for convenience, every store from supermarkets to the little corner shops were completely devoid of all products and liveliness.
Unfortunately, the misfortunes that was to befall the little island nation was just getting started. From the big waves in the Northeast to the still-unknown extent of nuclear disaster at Fukushima, the series of events since the Quake only added to the deep and very much permanent emotional scars of the physical survivors. Even as life slowly crawled back into normalcy in the couple of weeks after 3/11, something was still amiss and caused for endless worries...
That missing element, perhaps, was the conspicuous absence of government. In TVs and radio broadcasts in the immediate aftermath of 3/11, the government officials did not spare any energy is reassuring that the Fukushima problem is no cause for worries, and that the government is very much on the ground to repair the damages. Quickly enough, a high-profiled five-year rebuilding package in the hundreds of billions of US dollars were announced for implementation.
Yet, today, the absence of government is even more highlighted, contrasted with its big words a year earlier. Administrative officials continue to bicker on how rebuilding will be planned, executed, and earmarked funding spent, while the victims of the tsunami and Fukushima continued to suffer. What resulted was essentially a vacuum of not just executive power, but trust, a fundamental lack of hope among the people with regard to future recovery.
In this vacuum, a new force has effectively replaced the government. Handing out food, building shelters, releasing disaster information...the usual tasks of government emergency handling was taken up by NGOs, ranging from likes of International Red Cross to the millions of brand-new ones set up by locals disgruntled by government inaction. They collectively have now effectively wrestled away control of the disaster areas from their government-appointed bureaucrats.
The victims of the disasters, helpless in grasping any sense of optimism within their current situations, were and still are very much bound to unconditionally accept the increasing power and authority of the NGOs. With absence of government, they had no alternatives. They rallied behind the ideas and actions of the NGOs, giving them almost absolute power with little objective assessments of their behaviors. Logical enough, one simply does not bite the hand that does the feeding.
While some positive effects of the NGOs are not to be doubted (the contributions they made in the recovery of Japan's disaster zones should definitely be appreciated). But at the same time, the complete lack of check-and-balance on their actions in absence of government authorities should not simply be accepted as something appropriate. NGOs, perhaps even more than any other organizations shoved into extraordinary situations, are bound to make short-sighted decisions.
The proliferation of the recent PR campaign against Joseph Kony is a case in point. By shaming various governments from the US to Uganda in admitting that they have ignored righteous calls to intervene militarily to put an end to the humanitarian disaster, the NGOs are doing exactly the same thing they are doing in Japan's disaster areas: to justify their unilateral and unchecked establishment of absolute authority over areas where government have unfortunately disappeared.
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