The bodies of tens of thousands of people killed in Myanmar’s cyclone will probably never be identified because they were washed far from their homes and have decomposed so badly, an aid agency said yesterday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said burying the estimated 78,000 killed when the storm hit has taken a back seat to trying to assist the 2.4 million survivors, many of whom are still without adequate food, water and shelter. Government’s restrictions on aid workers accessing the delta has made that task all the more difficult.
As a result, bloated bodies still litter the Irrawaddy delta more than five weeks after Cyclone Nargis struck. Some have been dumped in canals and unmarked mass graves or cremated, while others remain untouched.
“Identifying bodies at this stage will be incredibly difficult,” said Craig Strathern, a Red Cross spokesman in Myanmar.
“Many now are in advanced stages of decay and the information we have been able to gather is that many of the bodies that were affected by the tidal surges were stripped of clothing and any identifying items,” he said. “We have reports that some bodies ended up 7km from their place of origin.”
Survivors in the delta said they initially attempted to identify bodies but were overwhelmed by the numbers of corpses clogging the rivers and washing up on the beaches.
“Initially, the bodies were identified by relatives and we cremated them after holding religious rites,” said Myint Thuang, a survivor from the delta town of Bogalay, referring to Buddhist traditions.
“However, after more bodies washed up on the shore and with no one to identify them, we buried them in mass graves,” he said, describing how they sprinkled lime powder on the graves of 10 or more bodies and marked some with a wooden stick.
Strathern said the Red Cross last week began distributing kits — with body bags and forms to list where a body is buried and any details identifying it — for volunteers wanting to dispose of the dead.
But he said he doubted there would be any large-scale effort to identify victims, mostly because there is no motivation. Myanmar law allows families to declare missing persons dead after only three weeks, clearing the way for relatives to claim death benefits and land ownership and other inheritance issues.
“We’re certainly not aware of any initiatives that try to achieve positive identification of bodies,” Strathern said. “I don’t know what the reason would be. If there is not a demand from the families or legal imperative in the system, it’s not going to achieve too much.”
The situation differs greatly from the 2004 Asian tsunami, which killed nearly 230,000 people. In worst-hit Banda Aceh, Indonesia, bodies were a top priority early on, driven largely by Muslim tradition that calls for burying the dead within the first day.
Corpses were dumped in mass graves as big as soccer fields, with aid workers, soldiers and volunteers all working together to mark the graves and identity the dead.
Disposing of the dead is just one of the many hurdles that have plagued the relief effort in Myanmar since the storm. The UN estimates that almost half of the 2.4 million survivors are still not getting adequate assistance, mostly due to the scale of the disaster and difficulty accessing the delta.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
BARRIER BLAME: An aviation expert questioned the location of a solid wall past the end of the runway, saying that it was ‘very bad luck for this particular airplane’ A team of US investigators, including representatives from Boeing, on Tuesday examined the site of a plane crash that killed 179 people in South Korea, while authorities were conducting safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines. All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air died in Sunday’s crash. Video showed the aircraft, without its landing gear deployed, crash-landed on its belly and overshoot a runaway at Muan International Airport before it slammed into a barrier and burst into flames. The plane was seen having engine trouble.
REVELRY ON HOLD: Students marched in Belgrade amid New Year’s events, saying that ‘there is nothing to celebrate’ after the train station tragedy killed 15 Thousands of students marched in Belgrade and two other Serbian cities during a New Year’s Eve protest that went into yesterday, demanding accountability over the fatal collapse of a train station roof in November. The incident in the city of Novi Sad occurred on Nov. 1 at a newly renovated train facility, killing 14 people — aged six to 74 — at the scene, while a 15th person died in hospital weeks later. Public outrage over the tragedy has sparked nationwide protests, with many blaming the deaths on corruption and inadequate oversight of construction projects. In Belgrade, university students marched through the capital
RSS