55,000 Dead: The Role of U.S. Criminal Negligence on a  Global Scale
Casualties of a policy of war, negligence, and corporate  greed

Statement from the International Action Center


December 28, 2004--While earthquakes and tsunamis are natural disasters, the  decision to spend billions of dollars on wars of conquest  while ignoring simple measures that can save human lives  is not.

At least 55,000 people were killed by the tsunami that  devastated coastlines from Indonesia to Somalia.  Almost a  third of the dead are children.  Thousands are still  missing and millions are homeless in 11 countries.    Hundreds of thousands have lost everything, and millions  face a bleak future because of polluted drinking water, a  lack of sanitation and no health services, according to UN  undersecretary Jan Egeland, who is in charge of emergency  relief coordination.

Egeland said, "We cannot fathom the cost of these poor  societies and the nameless fishermen and fishing villages  and so on that have just been wiped out. Hundreds of  thousands of livelihoods have gone."