Surabaya Mourning Air Asia Victims But Not Its Poor
For many years and decades and in the most vulgar manner, plane crashes have been exploited by mass media. As if lives lost at 30.000 feet above the ground or the surface of oceans were more valuable than those that were interrupted ‘on the surface’ by calamities, misery, hunger or preventable diseases, especially in the poor neighborhoods and in the slums.
Air Asia flight QZ-8501, lost en route from Indonesia’s second largest city, Surabaya, to Singapore, brought unprecedented outpouring of sorrow in all corners of this sprawling and socially collapsed archipelago.
