KALIANDA, Indonesia: Searching a debris-strewn beach for victims of Indonesia’s deadly tsunami, a rescue team happened upon a giant sea turtle trapped in a pile of marine trash.
It took four staff to haul the endangered creature back to sea, just the latest in a string of turtle rescues along the country’s devastated coast.
“The turtle was really large and it got stuck in a pile of rubbish, lying almost upside down,” Adi Ayangsyah, a member of a search and rescue team in hard-hit Lampung on Sumatra island, told AFP Friday. He said the turtle was “probably about 30 kilograms (66 pounds).” This week, about 15 other turtles were rescued in the same area. “We think they were swept ashore by the tsunami,” said Teguh Ismail, head of Lampung’s conservation agency. “But they didn’t have any wounds so we got them back in the water.” An eruption of the Anak Krakatoa volcano, which sits in the middle of the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra islands, caused a section of the crater to collapse and slide into the ocean, triggering the killer tsunami on Saturday evening.
On Friday, the death toll stood at 430 with some 159 still missing. Hopes for finding any survivors are all but gone, but the hunt isn’t limited to human victims.
“We’ll keep our eye out for other stranded turtles as well,” Ayangsyah said. “For us, all lives matter. Human or animal — we’ll try to rescue them all.”
’All lives matter’: Indonesia saves tsunami-stranded turtles
’All lives matter’: Indonesia saves tsunami-stranded turtles
- Hopes for finding any survivors are all but gone, but the hunt isn’t limited to human victims
Arts festival’s decision to exclude Palestinian author spurs boycott
- A Macquarie University academic who researches Islamophobia and Palestine, Abdel-Fattah responded saying it was “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship,” with her lawyers issuing a letter to the festival
SYDENY: A top Australian arts festival has seen the withdrawal of dozens of writers in a backlash against its decision to bar an Australian Palestinian author after the Bondi Beach mass shooting, as moves to curb antisemitism spur free speech concerns.
The shooting which killed 15 people at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Dec. 14 sparked nationwide calls to tackle antisemitism. Police say the alleged gunmen were inspired by Daesh.
The Adelaide Festival board said last Thursday it would disinvite Randa Abdel-Fattah from February’s Writers Week in the state of South Australia because “it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi.”
FASTFACTS
• Abdel-Fattah responded, saying it was ‘a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship.’
• Around 50 authors have since withdrawn from the festival in protest, leaving it in doubt, local media reported.
A Macquarie University academic who researches Islamophobia and Palestine, Abdel-Fattah responded saying it was “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship,” with her lawyers issuing a letter to the festival.
Around 50 authors have since withdrawn from the festival in protest, leaving it in doubt, local media reported.
Among the boycotting authors, Kathy Lette wrote on social media the decision to bar Abdel-Fattah “sends a divisive and plainly discriminatory message that platforming Australian Palestinians is ‘culturally insensitive.'”
The Adelaide Festival said in a statement on Monday that three board members and the chairperson had resigned. The festival’s executive director, Julian Hobba, said the arts body was “navigating a complex moment.”
a complex and unprecedented moment” after the “significant community response” to the board decision.
In the days after the Bondi Beach attack, Jewish community groups and the Israeli government criticized Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for failing to act on a rise in antisemitic attacks and criticized protest marches against Israel’s war in Gaza held since 2023.
Albanese said last week a Royal Commission will consider the events of the shooting as well as antisemitism and social cohesion in Australia. Albanese said on Monday he would recall parliament next week to pass tougher hate speech laws.
On Monday, New South Wales state premier Chris Minns announced new rules that would allow local councils to cut off power and water to illegally operating prayer halls.
Minns said the new rules were prompted by the difficulty in closing a prayer hall in Sydney linked to a cleric found by a court to have made statements intimidating Jewish Australians.
The mayor of the western Sydney suburb of Fairfield said the rules were ill-considered and councils should not be responsible for determining hate speech.
“Freedom of speech is something that should always be allowed, as long as it is done in a peaceful way,” Mayor Frank Carbone told Reuters.
