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Arabs like
Obama more
than the US:
Survey
WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama’s
popularity in leading Arab countries far out-
strips that of the United States, suggesting
he could be able to boost goodwill in the
region toward his country, a survey showed
on Sunday.
Obama, set to give a major speech to the
Muslim world in Egypt next month, “currently
enjoys widespread optimism among citizens
of that region that he will have a positive
effect on their own country, the Middle East,
the United States and indeed the world,” the
polling outfit Ipsos said.
Ipsos said its poll, conducted in March,
involved 7,000 adults in Saudi Arabia, the
United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Lebanon, Egypt
and Jordan.
Of those surveyed, 33% had a favourable
view of the US, 43% had a negative view, 14%
were neutral and 10% said they did not know,
Ipsos said.
In contrast, Obama received favourable rat-
ings averaging 48% in the region as a whole.
Approval ran as high as 58% in Jordan and was
lowest among Egyptians, who gave Obama
favourable ratings of 35%, Ipsos said.
Only 22% of Egyptians expressed a favour-
able view of the US, the lowest of the six
countries surveyed.
Regionwide, only one in 10 residents
thought Obama would have a negative effect
on their country, the poll showed.
The gulf between Obama’s popularity
and that of the US indicated “there is an op-
portunity for the president to literally ‘bridge
the gap’ where his reposit goodwill lifts the
goodwill towards America,” Ipsos said in
statement.
The White House announced on Friday
that Obama would deliver a much-anticipated
speech to the Muslim world in Egypt on June
4, seeking to repair ties that were damaged
under his predecessor George W. Bush.
Many Arab and Muslim nations were an-
gered by the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq,
harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects at
the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, abuse
of prisoners in Iraq and Bush’s initial reluctance
to pursue Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Ipsos said the survey had a margin of er-
ror ranging from 2.6 to 3 percentage points
depending on the country.
China quake parents wrestle
with grief one year on
Quake
survivors
burn
offerings to
mourn their
relatives who
died during
the Sichuan
earthquake,
in Beichuan
county,
China’s
Sichuan
province, on
Sunday.
JUYUAN: A year after Juyuan Middle
School came crashing down in China’s
May 12 earthquake, parents wrestle with
grief, protests, marriage breakups and
anger that defies government calls to put
the past behind.
Junior Secondary Year 3, Class 5, at
Juyuan was settling down to a lesson
when the quake convulsed southwest
Sichuan province, tearing the main
building into concrete slabs that killed
up to 60 or more of its nearly 70 students,
said parents.
On the anniversary of the quake,
the emotional aftershocks still grip the
bereaved parents of class 3(5) students,
30 of whom spoke to Reuters. Many
said the government had compounded
their bitterness by curtailing collective
mourning.
Some parents said they want to defy
official warnings and grieve together at
the razed site of the school today.
“We just want to remember our
children and what happened. But we
can’t even do that. So how can we put
this behind us?” said Cai Song, one of
the parents who spoke by telephone or
Relatives of in face-to-face interviews away from
earthquake watchful police and officials around the
victims cry town.
while they The Chinese government recently
mourn at sought to end public disquiet about thou-
the ruins of sands of children killed in the quake, is-
quake-hit suing official fatality numbers and vows
Beichuan of safer schools.
county. But interviews with parents in Juy-
uan, where most said about 450 children
died at the middle school, showed the
deaths remain a wound likely to
fester long across the region.
Some parents continue to
protest against the collapse of the school
building, claiming it and many others
were blighted by corruption that bred
shoddy construction.
Some have already given birth to
children they hope will fill the void left
in their lives. Others have had miscar-
riages.
Some are mired in despair, their emo-
tions or marriages broken by the loss of
children whose futures made sacrifices
worthwhile.
“I don’t care any more. Whatever we
say does no good,” said Lin Changzhen,
whose daughter died in the class. “I feel I
have no future, nothing.”
Lin said she gave away the 60,000
yuan (RM30,800) that the government
has given each bereaved family of a
student here. “Many people said I was
mad, but I couldn’t touch that money,”
she said. “It’s dirty.”
Juyuan lies off the highway between
the provincial capital Chengdu and the
smaller city of Dujiangyan, and its rag-
ged rows of farms and workshops are
the kind of place where the children of
farmers and small traders dreamed of a
better future.
Class 3(5) on the building’s second
floor cradled such hopes. Parents said
its students yearned to reach senior high
school, maybe even university, escaping
the rice and wheat fields to become doc-
tors, singers and entrepreneurs. Anything
but farmers.
Parents gave varying estimates of the
children in the class, but most said about
68 or so were packed into the room,
squeezed into desks designed for when
children were poorer and smaller.
“It looked like a crowded plane,” said
Dong Tianqun, a mother whose daugh-
ter, Dong Yang, died in the classroom.
Many of the 14- and 15-year-olds had
bedrooms decorated with posters of pop
stars. To parents’ alarm, some were also
trying out fashions and rebel attitudes
from the nearby big city.
But the teenagers also carried the
burden of parental hopes. Nearly all were
their parents’ only child, the limit for
most families under Chinese popu-
lation control policies.
In the countryside, as well, state-
backed old-age care and pensions
are rudimentary, and traditional
expectations that children will sup-
port their parents run especially deep.
So in Juyuan and other quake-hit ar-
eas, the deaths tore at the conviction that
parents should sacrifice much for their
children’s futures to have that loyalty
returned in later life.
Here and elsewhere, too, parents were
enraged that schools fell, while apart-
theSun | TUESDAY MAY 12 2009
ments and government offices stayed
intact.
The fury has stoked protests and peti-
tions blaming corruption for weakened
schools, with builders paying off officials
so they could skimp on materials and
skirt standards.
When one Juyuan builder who par-
ents accused of shoddy work celebrated
his birthday, about 50 sent him a wreath
as tall as a man, festooned with the names
of dead children and white flowers, said
Dong Tianqun.
White is the Chinese colour of mourn-
ing.
“He said, ‘I’d like to take responsibil-
ity, but the government won’t let me. It’s
not just my head that would roll’,” said
Dong, wearing red lipstick and bright
new clothes she said reminded her to
stay strong.
But those who protest face detention
and neighbours are paid 50 yuan (RM25)
a day to report on them at sensitive times,
said several parents.
China’s ruling Communist Party has
long sought to turn citizens’ memories
away from sensitive and contentious
memories to brighter hopes, and the
quake is no exception.
Last week, a Sichuan official said
5,335 school students died in the quake,
lower than many critics have claimed.
But parents said what they wanted
most was what the government has not
given – an open reckoning with claims
that corruption lay behind some of the
toppled schools.
“We don’t necessarily want compen-
sation or trials, but we want a fair, just
answer,” said Zheng Chenglong, whose
son Zheng Jiajie died in the class. He was
not hopeful.
For some, however, the weight of grief
is unlikely to lift whatever the govern-
ment does.
Chen Lin, a farmer whose daughter,
Chen Zijun, died, said the woman he
married after the quake fled a month ago,
afraid of his temper, and called last week
to demand a divorce.
Chen divorced the mother of his
daughter several years ago. – Reuters
A Sichuan earthquake survivor waits for
his relatives to mourn near his former
house, in Beichuan county.