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.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS