| December 2004
Oh joy! a dustbin at last!
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9/11 -- the destruction of New York's World Trade Center by al-Qaeda --
has indeed been a seminal event. By drawing attention to how vulnerable
our modern, urban lives are, it has spawned a raft of measures by various
governments to lower the risk of another terrorist attack. At airports, we now
face more intensive bag searches and body scans than we've ever known. But
it's not only the jetsetters who have to put up with greater
inconvenience, even the humblest commuter in Singapore is affected. Look around any metro
station, and you won't see trash bins anymore. Even bus terminals have had
their bins removed, except for one or two way out in the open, a safe
distance from where people might gather. If you're like me, who tend to
buy a drink just before or a journey, and finish it just before entering
the "No eating, no drinking" station, you'd find yourself
holding the empty can or tetrapack for the entire journey till you're well
out of the destination station. The trash bins were
removed because they would be easy places for terrorists to put a bomb and
walk away. In December 2001, Jemaah Islamiah, who are affiliated with al-Qaeda,
nearly managed to plant bombs at Yishun station. Then on 11 March 2004,
multiple bombs went off on Madrid's urban-rail system, killing nearly 200
people. It's undeniable that the risk is serious. It's times like these
when you need governments to be effective. For examples of less
effective governance, we need look no further than Indonesia. Their laws
don't have enough teeth; their police intelligence is weak. Worst of all,
the courts sometimes hand down absurd rulings. Meanwhile corruption makes
everything unreliable. After the Bali bombing
on 12 October 2002, there's been the blast at Jakarta's Marriott Hotel (5
Aug 2003), and then earlier this year, another suicide bombing near the
front gate of the Australian Embassy (9 September 2004). The Indonesia
authorities don't seem to be on top of the situation. However, what more
directly affects our security is the piracy situation in the Straits of
Malacca. That stretch of water so close to us is infamous for pirate
attacks. As reported in Time magazine, (29 Nov 2004), these waters had 25
reported cases of piracy in the first nine months of 2004, almost as many
as all of 2003, when in the rest of the world piracy declined by a third
in the same period. Through the Straits of
Malacca, some 50,000 ship-voyages annually carry one-third of the world's
trade and half its crude oil. A terrorist attack on vessels there can shut
off this flow and send the world economy into a tailspin. More ominously, recent
pirate attacks have involved as many as five or six speedboats, and when
they take over a big ship, they seem to have experienced crews who are
able to continue sailing the captured vessel. It's a level of
sophistication that is as good as the 9/11 hijackers taking over the
controls of 4 commercial airliners and flying them to their targets. Meanwhile, an officer
from the Indonesian Navy was quoted by Time magazine admitting that they
are "poorly paid, poorly equipped and poorly motivated." "The government
can't even pay our wages on time or in full, and often we can't go out on
patrol anyway because we don't have enough money for fuel. The pirates
have faster boats, plenty of cash and better intelligence. We don't stand
a chance." Which may explain why
Indonesian waters now see half of all piracy attacks worldwide. Another neighbour with
bombs going off is Thailand. Some 500 people have died since the beginning
of this year in its three southernmost provinces
from bombings and shootings. [1] And it's still not clear what plans the
government has for resolving the conflict other than airdropping millions
of origami cranes. Prime Minister Thaksin
personally wanted this airdrop to show the people in the south that all
their Thai compatriots from other provinces want peace. The view from the
south is that this is just so much unwanted litter. In the weeks preceding
the airdrop, all civil servants had to do their bit and fold some quota of
origami birds. The customs officers at the airport were so busy at it --
and it was hard work for burly men with thick fingers to fold two-inch
squares of paper -- almost none of them were examining the cases of
merchandise that arriving tourists and citizens were trundling past. Could a terrorist bring
a bomb in under their noses? "No, Bangkok is
safe," a travel agent assured me. "The troubles are only in the
far, far south." But it would be all too
easy, I said, for a determined terrorist to drive up to Bangkok in a
minivan with a ton of explosives. There are no checks anywhere on Thai
roads. "But they are not
interested in Bangkok. They want independence for the south," she
replied breezily. It seems not to have
occurred to many people that terrorists, militants, rebels, whatever you
wish to call them, might want the media attention from blowing up a street
in the capital city. Perhaps the government
is not as complacent as the travel agent. Perhaps, without alarming the
population, precautionary measures are being taken. That seemed to be the
case when I found myself walking up and down Silom Road looking for a
trash bin for my empty tetrapack. For 200 – 300 metres, there wasn't a
bin in sight. Here and there, there were piles of rubbish, and I was
sorely tempted to just add my container to the messy heaps, but I kept
telling myself I should try a little harder before I succumbed to my baser
instincts. My fruitless search
for a bin left me annoyed, but also piqued, especially as I was sure
I had seen them in previous visits to the city. Possibly, the government
was taking the same precautions as Singapore. But then again, there
could be some uniquely local reasons. One that occurred to me was that the
bins had all been taken away by scavengers. In a city where there are some
desperately poor people, we sometimes see filthy and ragged
men, or even women, picking through the trash. It's not inconceivable
that the bins themselves had resale value, which might explain their
disappearance. Then I happened to look
up and saw Saladaeng station, and it flashed in my mind that I had seen a
bin there. I didn't take note of it then, but it's remarkable how the
brain recalled a passing scene from a day ago. Was I imagining it? Was
that passing scene really from yesterday, or from a previous visit months
back? I went up the
escalator, and as I reached the top, Oh joy! A dustbin at last! Which immediately put
paid to the theory that the public bins had been removed as a precaution
against bombs. Here was one, after all, right on the station concourse
where crowds were pouring through the gates. The following day, I
was back at the travel agency, but speaking with another woman. I asked
her, "What happened to all the bins along the street?" "Oh, that man,
Thaksin!" she began raising her voice. "He wanted the place to
look good for the APEC summit, so he ordered all the bins to be
removed." "But that summit
took place a year ago," I pointed out [2] She shrugged her
shoulders and threw her hands up. © Yawning Bread
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Footnotes
Addenda None
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