Huh? There’s lite point in making a asifas tefillah of people who have no clue what they are saying.
1- Presumably the idea that they are involved in a public gathering of sorts because there is a desperate situation going on makes an impression that 1- this issue is very important; 2- we believe in davening / koach tefillah (especially if it’s worth being mevatel learning (gasp!!) for), so even to the participants, it has a practical upside.
2- Davening without kavanah is still worth infinitely something!!
3- There is also the issue of public visibility and impression to consider. (to just throw a few out there. I am not privy to the reasons why, nor am i pretending to know that these were necessarily a key part of their cheshbonos.)
Tefillah is avodas shebelev.
That might be the ikkar, but there is mystical value inherently in uttering the words without any kavana whatsoever.
Without knowing what your saying you won’t be activating the shebeleiv aspect and therefore you are just shouting out words. Might as well be screaming out some prayer in Chinese.
That’s precisely the difference between saying it in lashon hakodesh and chinese – the words of lashon hakodesh as formulated by chazal are intrinsically laden with kedusha. Which is not quite as true about chinese.
The basic point being that you get schar for “laining” davening, as there’s a mitzva (and a chiyuv) to say the words, and with a few exceptions you are yotzei with saying the words without an iota of what they mean. So, just like the rest of the mitzvos we do, our words of prayer are pitifully lacking but they limp their way up to the heavens which apparently have disability access these days.