Indonesia's Aceh marks 7 years since Indian Ocean tsunami

Dec 26, 2011, 5:52 GMT

Banda Aceh, Indonesia - Aliya Humaira scribbled a message on yellow paper in the shape of a petal: 'I love Papa, I love Mama, I love Sister Icha, I love Brother Kiki.'

The 8-year-old Aliya lost her parents, a brother and a sister in the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that devastated Aceh province on Indonesia's Sumatra island.

She and other children marked the 7th anniversary of the tsunami by planting 5,000 paper flowers containing messages of hope from their Japanese peers on a golf course in Aceh Besar district.

The yellow paper flowers were sent by children in the Japanese city of Kobe, where more than 6,000 people were killed after a 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck 16 years ago.

'Let's rise up together,' read one message written by a Japanese earthquake survivor.

Aliya is now being raised by her grandmother in Medan, the capital of neighbouring North Sumatra province.

'Every year I take Aliya to Aceh so that she won't forget her family,' said the grandmother, Khamariyah, wiping tears that rolled down her eyes. Like many Indonesians she uses only one name.

Aceh was the region hardest hit by the 2004 tsunami.

The disaster, triggered by a magnitude-9.3 earthquake off Sumatra, killed an estimated 230,000 people in 13 countries along the Indian Ocean, including 170,000 in Aceh and Nias island.

Thousands attended the ceremony marking the anniversary in Aceh Besar attended by Aceh Governor Irwandi Yusuf and guests from Japan.

'The paper flowers are called Shinsai Mirai No Hana, which means flowers of the future,' said Ryo Nishikawa, a Japanese social worker who organized the project.

He said Achinese children would also send similar flowers to their Japanese peers in Kobe.

Relatives gathered Monday at mass graves where thousands of Achinese victims of the tsunami were buried to say prayers.

At a mass grave in Siron, Muslims, Christians and Buddhists offered joint prayers while others in the staunchly Islamic province gathered at local mosques.

Days before the anniversary, an Achinese girl who was thought to have died in the tsunami was found and reunited with her parents.

Her grandfather said she was forced to beg by her adopted mother for years before she left her to look for her biological parents.