Word: aceh
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Pity the poor tourism officials of Aceh. Their job - promoting the beaches, jungles and rich culture of an unspoiled and underexplored Indonesian province - should be easy. But just as Aceh recovered from a decades-long civil war and a devastating tsunami, along came the Wilayatul Hisbah (vice and virtue patrol) to enforce Shari'a, or Islamic law. Its officers have raided unisex beauty salons, harassed women without headscarves and publicly caned gamblers and drinkers...
...Aceh isn't the only Islamic society in Asia to cane transgressors. In February, three Malaysian women were subjected to several strokes each after being convicted of extramarital sex. But that sentence was meted out inside a Kuala Lumpur prison. If a proposal drafted last September by a group of Acehnese lawmakers had come to fruition, adulterers might have been stoned to death in public. Pristine beaches and alfresco executions? It's hardly a formula that's going to worry Phuket or Bali. (See 25 authentic Asian experiences...
Launched in early February with the help of Haitian officials and aid groups like Save the Children, UNICEF's child registry is similar to one the organization created in South Asia after the tsunami in 2004. In the Indonesian territory of Aceh, the worst-hit area, aid workers took five months to compile the names of about 3,000 displaced children, 240 of whom were eventually reunited with a parent. Hundreds more went to live with relatives whom aid workers found by going door to door and matching information about birthmarks and other identifying details. Marie de la Soudi?...
What story have you felt most passionate about covering? - Keith Spencer, Everett, Mass. I think probably Hurricane Katrina. I cover a lot of perfectly horrible things. I'd love to shake what we saw in Baghdad. I'd love to shake what we saw in Banda Aceh, where 30,000 people died. But I can't shake the sight of a dead body on a major street corner next to the Superdome and how these people were failed by grownups and their government, whom we entrust to protect...
...International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Top of the list: preparing for the next disaster. A regional tsunami early-warning system has been up and running since 2006. But getting timely and accurate information to imperiled communities is problematic. Time is of the essence: Aceh, for example, sits on the northern tip of the seismologically hyperactive island of Sumatra, where an earthquake in the western city of Padang killed more than 1,000 people in September. (See more about tsunamis...