The first rescue teams reaching isolated communities reported 133 more confirmed dead on Sunday, raising the death toll in mudslides in Guatemala linked to Hurricane Stan to 652 with 384 missing, as some Indian villages were converted into de facto cemeteries.
The new reports of dead and missing -- which could raise the death toll past 1,000 -- emerged from the first army and civil defense teams to reach the western township of Tacana, near the Mexico border, an area largely cut off from the rest of the country by mudslides that remained dangerously unstable.
Mayan Indian communities across Guatemala struggled with the conflicting demands of tradition -- which demands the recovery of bodies and decent burial -- with the shifting fields of mud. Many now say the vast mudflows will have to be declared graveyards.
"They [experts] have advised us not to dig anymore, because there is a great danger" that the still-soaked earth may collapse again, said Uvaldo Najera, a Tacana municipal employee reached by telephone.
Officials said Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum will travel to some of the hardest-hit villages, like Panabaj on the shores of Lake Atitlan, to hold consultations with Indian leaders on how to reconcile cultural traditions, while keeping the living from being injured in attempts to recover the dead.
An estimated 250 people are still believed to be encased in vast mud flows in Panabaj. More than 770 confirmed deaths and hundreds of missing in Central America and Mexico.
Indians leaders say they are exhausted by the days spent digging for victims since the Wednesday mudslides, and are worried about diseases from the decomposing corpses.
"Panabaj will no longer exist," Mayor Diego Esquina said, referring to the hamlet covered by a kilometer-wide mudflow as much as 4m to 6m thick. "We are asking that it be declared a cemetery. We are tired."
"The bodies are so rotted that they can no longer be identified. They will only bring disease," Esquina said.
Many of the missing apparently will simply be declared dead, and the ground they rest in declared hallowed ground. About 160 bodies have been recovered in Panabaj and nearby towns, and most have been buried in mass graves.
Promised sniffer dogs trained to detect bodies failed to arrive in time, and "we don't even know where to dig anymore" in the immensity of the mudflows, Esquina said.
Hundreds of Mayan villagers who had swarmed over the vast mudslides with shovels, picks and axes to dig for victims in previous days gave up their efforts on Sunday, overwhelmed by the task.
Vice President Eduardo Stein said steps were being taken to give towns "legal permission to declare the buried areas cemeteries" as "a sanitary measure."
As aid workers penetrated into the most remote areas, reports began to trickle in of death in strange and terrible forms. Some of the deaths in Tacana, about 20km from the Mexican border, reportedly occurred when a mudslide buried a building housing a storm shelter where about 100 people had taken refuge from rains and flooding.
The sensitivity of the Indian communities' past -- including tens of thousands of deaths at the hands of soldiers and death squads in the 1960-1996 civil war -- was clearly on display in Panabaj, where residents refused to even consider allowing troops in to help recover bodies. Esquina said that memories are still too vivid of a 1990 army massacre of 13 villagers on the same ground in Panabaj now covered by the mudslide.
"The people don't let soldiers to come in here, they won't accept it," Esquina said.
Meanwhile, thousands of hungry and injured survivors mobbed helicopters delivering the first food aid to communities that have been cut off from the outside world for nearly a week.
Helicopters -- including private craft, and US Blackhawks and Chinooks -- fanned out across the nation to evacuate the wounded and bring supplies to over 100 communities still cut off by the mudslides and flooding.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
US President Donald Trump on Friday said Washington was “locked and loaded” to respond if Iran killed protesters, prompting Tehran to warn that intervention would destabilize the region. Protesters and security forces on Thursday clashed in several Iranian cities, with six people reported killed, the first deaths since the unrest escalated. Shopkeepers in Tehran on Sunday last week went on strike over high prices and economic stagnation, actions that have since spread into a protest movement that has swept into other parts of the country. If Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
RSS