Thursday 6 February 2014

ASFM Annual Conference, Abuja (Nigeria), 3-7 March 2014 - Management of Bodies of Victims following Disasters


The theme for the conference is "Management of Bodies of Victims following Disasters"

Forensic and Anatomical Pathologists, and allied practitioners across Africa and beyond, will share their experience on management of disaster victims.

Other relevant stakeholders on this subject will also be part of expanding knowledge and improving practice in this area.

http://www.asfmonline.org/mainpage.html

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Italy rescues more than 1,100 migrants in rafts south of Sicily


The Italian navy has rescued more than 1,100 migrants from nine large rafts in the waters south of Sicily.

Patrol helicopters identified the overcrowded rafts about 120 miles south-east of Lampedusa on Wednesday and four navy vessels participated in the rescue which ended early on Thursday. The navy gave no details about the nationalities of the migrants.

Meanwhile Moroccan authorities say emergency services have recovered the bodies of seven people who drowned after attempting to swim to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. Authorities told the state news agency that at least 200 migrants tried to swim to the enclave, which is on a peninsula jutting out from the Moroccan shore.

Italy is a major gateway into Europe for migrants, and sea arrivals more than tripled in 2013 from the previous year, fuelled by Syria's civil war and strife in the Horn of Africa.

In October, 366 Eritreans drowned in a shipwreck near the shore of the Italian island of Lampedusa, which is located about halfway between Sicily and Tunisia. More than 200, mostly Syrians, died in another shipwreck a week later.

With two Spanish enclaves on its coast, Morocco is a magnet for immigrants from all over Africa seeking jobs in Europe.

Every month, hundreds of immigrants attempt to force their way into Ceuta, near the city of Tetouan, and Melilla to the east.

Over the past two decades, Italy, Greece and the Mediterranean island of Malta have borne the brunt of migrant flows and have urged the EU to make a more robust and coordinated response.

Thursday 06 February 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/06/italy-rescues-migrants-rafts-sicily

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Eight bodies recovered after fire and rockfall at mine near Johannesburg


Rescuers recovered eight bodies and continued to search for another missing worker on Thursday after a fire and rock-fall at a Harmony Gold mine near Johannesburg, the worst accident in South Africa's mines in nearly five years.

Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu ordered an investigation into the incident at the Doornkop mine, 30km (20 miles) west of the city, after initial reports that the fire was triggered by a small earthquake on Tuesday evening.

"The situation is deeply regrettable," Shabangu said in a statement. "We must ensure that we do all we can to get to the bottom of what caused this incident in order to prevent similar occurrences in future."

It is the most serious accident in South Africa's mines since nine workers died in a rockfall at a platinum mine in July 2009.

Rescue teams battled through smoke and debris nearly a mile underground on Wednesday to reach eight miners who had managed to flee to a refuge bay equipped with a telephone and other survival gear. They were brought to the surface unharmed.

South Africa's gold mines are the deepest in the world and were ranked as some of the most dangerous during the apartheid era.

Since the end of white-minority rule in 1994, the government, unions and companies have worked to improve safety, but 112 people were still killed in 2012, the last year for which records are available.

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Harmony said the fire broke out on Tuesday evening after an earthquake damaged ventilation and water pipes as well as power cables.

However, NUM questioned safety standards at the mine, saying the rescued miners reported that the ventilation system in one of the refuge chambers was letting in fumes.

"It does tell us that the rescue chambers were not according to safety standards," said NUM secretary-general Frans Baleni. "We cannot just say that it is regrettable. Heads most roll should the investigation find that there was negligence."

A Harmony spokeswoman said it was possible the refuge bays had been compromised either in the earthquake or the fire that followed. An investigation by government, union and the company's officials was under way, she said.

Thursday 06 February 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/06/bodies-mine-doornkop-johannesburg

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13 dead in Ukraine train accident


At least 13 people were killed and five injured when a commuter train hit a shuttle passenger van at a level crossing in East Ukrainian region of Sumy, the regional prosecutor's press center said on Tuesday (February 4).

An official said the driver of the van which was carrying 18 passengers, ignored the warning sign of an approaching train and tried to cross the railway track when the collision happened.

"A bus that followed the route from Vorozhba to Sumy didn't stop on a red light at a railroad crossing and got hit by train from Vorozhba to Sumy. As we know now, today we have 12 people dead and six are in town of Sumy, they get medical treatment," Victor Chernyavskiy, the first deputy head of the Sumy regional administration said.

One of the injured later died in hospital, raising the number of deaths to 13. Five people, including a child, were in hospital.

Ukraine's Channel 5 showed the crash site with bodies of the van's passenger lying by the tracks.

The crash happened at about 3:35 p.m. local time near Vyry, about 25 kilometers south of Ukraine's border with Russia.

None of the train passengers was injured, the Ukrainian railways said.

The driver of the van was not killed in the accident, regional prosecutor's office said.

Road police said signals on the railroad crossing were working normally, local media reported.

Thursday 06 February 2014

http://www.solarnews.ph/news/world/2014/02/05/13-dead-in-ukraine-train-accident

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The volunteers who provided dignity for the dead following Typhoon Haiyan


The snap of latex gloves in the back of the truck is the only sound as a group of Philippine Red Cross volunteers tasked with one of the most difficult jobs in the typhoon aftermath head out to work.

They are the body retrieval team and they have just had call out.

The team of four have been undertaking this grim task since the day after the disaster. They have collected dozens of victims and although they admit it is a grisly and often traumatic job, they recognise they’re helping those survivors who are desperate to determine the fate of their loved ones. On this particular day, the team had been called to collect two bodies in the San Fernando area of the city.

As the Red Cross truck pulled up on the roadside close to where the remains were believed to be, Annalou Atterberry approached. The 27-year-old teaching assistant said she had come to Tacloban from Manila to bring basic supplies for her family in Leyte and Samar. When she arrived, she was told her 15-year-old nephew Romuel Capilos was missing.

Romuel had quit school in order to earn extra cash for his family and two days before Haiyan hit, he took up a gruelling job in a fish processing factory in Tacloban. He was working up to 21 hours a day for 1,500 pesos a month – the equivalent of about $35 US dollars.



He and between 15 and 20 of his colleagues had worked on the day of the typhoon instead of evacuating.

Annalou hitched a ride from Bongdo Julita village in Leyte, where most of her family live, and came to find Romuel. And that morning she did find him – she found his body wedged under a wall. She’d crawled over the rubble of his workplace until she caught sight of the green t-shirt and shorts she knew he had been wearing on the day of the storm.

She explained Romuel’s mother had been having a recurring dream that her son was trapped underneath something. “That’s why I came,” Annalou said. “Because she kept having the dream that he was saying ‘mum, please help me, please get me out.’ Hopefully, now we can.”

The retrieval team went to assess the scene and deemed it too dangerous. They enlisted the help of the police and their heavy-lifting equipment before heading off to continue collecting the two bodies from the initial call out. The team found them next to each other – they were the bodies of an adult woman and a baby girl, about one year old. The skilful volunteers were able to retrieve the pair and prepare them for burial with dignity, as a crowd of neighbours look on.

Francis Hidalgo, 36, has been a central member of the retrieval team since the operation began. As a father, he admits the job can be harrowing and led to nights when sleep evades him but he said: “It makes me think of my family and how I want to be with them and keep them close. But helping people gives me and all the guys energy. This is one part of being a Red Cross volunteer and I feel it is very important.”

Thursday 06 February 2014

http://www.ifrc.org/en/news-and-media/news-stories/asia-pacific/philippines/the-volunteers-who-provided-dignity-for-the-dead-following-typhoon-haiyan-64363/

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Ten killed, 39 injured as bus falls into trench at Khambatki ghat


Ten people from Porbandar in Gujarat, including seven women, were killed and 39 were injured when the private bus they were travelling in went off the Pune-Bangalore highway and fell into a trench. The driver reportedly lost control on a slope that had a sharp turn near the Khambatki tunnel in Satara district on Monday night.

Another major accident at the same spot was averted after four persons in a car, that had halted near the accident site, suffered minor injuries when the car was hit by a truck that also went out of control on the slope just few minutes after the first accident. The truck went on to hit another car and a tempo before turning turtle into a roadside trench.

About three weeks ago, nine persons had lost their lives after a heavy container had crushed a tempo at the same spot.

The bus with 47 pilgrims — most of them conservancy staffers from Porbandar Municipal Corporation — had started from Porbandar on January 10. They were on the way back after visiting Tirupati, Rameswaram and several other pilgrimage sites in South India. They took a halt at Karad in Satara and had resumed their journey at 7 pm on Monday.

Deputy Superintendent of Police Rahul Makanikar said, “About a km after the bus crossed the Khambatki tunnel, the driver reportedly lost control on the second turn of the sharp S-shaped curve, that also has a slope. The bus was going at a very high speed and turned turtle as it fell into the trench.”

The injured were rushed to nearby hospitals initially by some people who stopped by to help and the police, and later by ambulances. Ten of them, including the driver and the cleaner, were declared dead on arrival at hospitals. The injured are being treated at three hospitals in Satara town, Shirwal and Khandala-Pargaon and all are said to be out of danger. The injured also include some children. The injuries of the four persons from the second accident are minor, police said.

Mohan Chudasama, one of the survivors, said, “We could see that the driver was not able to control the bus on the slope and many of us got up from our seats. We thought the brakes had failed. We were very scared and the next thing we know was that the bus was in the trench and many of us were injured.”

Satara Regional Transport Officer Bhalchandra Kulkarni said, “The vehicle be examined and only after that will we be able to comment on whether there was any fault in the vehicle or not.” Rajesh Jethwa, another injured, said, “We were to complete our journey by February 1 but the bus broke down several times. All of us are civic conservancy staffers; some had even borrowed money for this pilgrimage.”

The bodies were being handed over to the relatives till late on Tuesday at Khandala hospital after post-mortem examination.

Thursday 06 February 2014

http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/pune/ten-killed-39-injured-as-bus-falls-into-trench-at-khambatki-ghat/

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A family's struggle to find a missing loved one in post-Haiyan Philippines


The poster shows two pictures of a smiling boy - one in a shirt, tie and trousers looking dapper, and the other in the arms of a family member. “Have you seen this boy?” the headline asks in thick black letters.

Three-year-old Tarin Sustento has not been seen since the morning of Nov. 8, 2013 when Typhoon Haiyan bore down on the central Philippines with tree-snapping winds and tsunami-like waves. Mildly autistic, Tarin cannot speak and does not know his name.

The boy is one of the 1,785 people the government has declared as missing following the storm, which killed more than 6,000.

The bungalow in Tacloban that Tarin used to share with his parents and four other relatives is now an abandoned wreck.

“Keep walking, nothing to see here,” ordered a message scrawled in capital letters on the white metal gate. Yet the remaining members of the family have not given up hope of finding him.

“We’re hopeful somebody took him in because my brother placed a lifejacket on him,” said Joanna Sustento, Tarin’s aunt and one of two known survivors in the family, as she sat in the living room of a relatives’ house in Palo, a town next to Tacloban.

Tacloban, a coastal city that bore the brunt of the storm, is slowly beginning the long and difficult task of rebuilding. For people whose loved ones remain missing, moving on is a challenge. Posters asking for information of their whereabouts still adorn the walls of churches and bus stops three months after the typhoon, locally known as Yolanda.

“Even if we gave people food, shelter and water, the psychological trauma from being separated from their families is still a big problem for them,” said Beverly Kalingag, social services officer with the Philippines Red Cross (PRC), which has been tracing missing people with support from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

LOVED ONES SWEPT AWAY

The posters of Tarin, whose father was a well-known tattoo artist, and a Facebook campaign set up by his other aunt, received many responses. Most were from people asking for money but that has not deterred Tarin’s relatives in tracking down each lead.

“A friend of my brother’s said that a doctor he knows told him that another doctor brought a three-year-old child from Tacloban to Manila about two months ago”, Sustento said.

“But we’re not sure if the child’s a boy or a girl,” added Sustento, who lost her parents, her eldest brother and his wife during a harrowing two-hour fight for survival.

On the day of the storm, strong winds woke up the whole family in the early hours. Around seven at the breakfast table they noticed water coming in through the kitchen door.

“Our house is near the coast but we have not experienced flooding before, and we never expected a storm surge,” Sustento said.

Within minutes, the water was at chest level. As they rushed out of the house, she saw a snake, she recalled.

“I freaked out but I tried to stay calm as I didn’t want to worry my father. He had a heart surgery in August and the doctors told us one more attack and that would be it,” she said.



“I looked at Tarin and even though he didn’t say anything I could see he was worried and afraid,” she added. Her sister-in-law got bitten in her thumb as they were struggling to hold on to the window grill. She sucked the poison out of her but when Sustento looked again, after helping her parents, her sister-in-law had drifted away.

Only Sustento and an unmarried brother survived the typhoon. The body of their father is yet to be found.

NEED FOR CLOSURE

The Philippines Red Cross set up a welfare desk immediately after the disaster and informed survivors they could request for help to find missing loved ones.

The ICRC, which has decades of experience in restoring family links, says it has resolved 504 cases of missing persons in two of the worst-affected provinces, Samar and Leyte.

This is done using rudimentary but effective methods such as making door-to-door enquiries and talking to neighbours and community leaders.

More than 120 cases remain open in Tacloban, including that of Tarin, according to PRC’s Kalingag. This means they have not been able to determine whether the person is dead or alive.

Sustento said Tarin’s family is exploring all options including waiting for the National Bureau of Investigations to process the dead bodies in Tacloban, of which 2,542 have yet to be identified. The government has warned it will be a costly and time-consuming task.

Bodies are still being recovered too. On the day this correspondent visited Tarin’s former home, almost three months after the storm, four fresh body bags lie on the side of the road some 100 metres away from the house.

“We are hoping that we will still find Tarin,” Joanna said. “Dead or alive. Just for closure.

Thursday 06 February 2014

http://www.trust.org/item/20140205115838-yncd7/

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Call for fast-tracking compensation for missing workers


A labour organisation yesterday demanded the missing victims of the Rana Plaza building collapse be declared dead through inspection instead of solely depending on DNA tests, so that their families can be compensated.

The families that have been waiting for closure for the last nine months have lost hope of finding the graves of their loved ones through DNA tests, as human remains are still buried at the site, the organisation said.

As the bodies recovered were decomposed beyond recognition, some families took home the wrong bodies, making it harder for DNA sampling to identify the victims, it said.

Speaking at a press briefing at Topkhana Road in Dhaka, a garment worker's organisation—Bangladesh Garment Sramik Samati— demanded a fresh search for human remains at the Rana Plaza site.

“The discovery of Obaidul's skeleton at the site, followed by around 300 bones, proves that the rescue mission at Rana Plaza site was flawed, incomplete,” said Taslima Akhter, convenor of the organisation.

The discoveries suggest that the actual death toll in the disaster is much higher than the official figure of 1,135, she said.

The families of the missing workers received little in the form of compensation, and there is confusion over the death toll as no one could confirm how many people were inside the building when it collapsed on April 24, she said.

There were three families at the event, whose DNA samples matched in the tests, but could not find their loved ones among the unidentified graves.

Thursday 06 February 2014

http://www.thedailystar.net/business/call-for-fast-tracking-compensation-for-missing-workers-10091

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Expert faults Nigeria’s disaster management policy on corpses


Nigeria’s management and preparedness for disasters have been criticised for its lack of sensitivity on handling of bodies of victims as well as the communities affected following disasters. Dr Uwom Eze, a Forensic Pathologist at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, said what would be needed to close this gap was going to be the thrust of the African Society of Forensic Medicine (ASFM) Annual Forensic Conference early in March, 2014, at Abuja.

The annual conference, with the theme; “Management of Bodies of Victims Following Disasters” is to have in attendance, forensic and anatomical pathologists, medical laboratory and mortuary workers, law enforcement agencies, coroners, legal practitioners, NEMA officials, Red Cross and other stakeholders in disaster management.

Eze, saying that disasters were unfortunately inevitable, declared that often times the mental and psychological health issues that affected the community where the disaster occurred were neglected.

The expert who emphasised that there were so many medico-legal issues that need to be considered in relationship with such incidences, said in restoring sanity after disasters, government needed to first of all identify those who were involved.

“Bodies of victims are usually neglected. People are admonished to forget the dead but the dead is never dead because they leave traces of memory, life and consequences for their dependants and for their communities. That is why we are focusing on the management of bodies of victims”.

“Often we do mass burial and this may imply that the family of the missing may never get to know whether the person is actually dead; they never get to give the person appropriate burial and that is a perpetual mental and psychological torture for all people who are involved.

“The affected communities never come to closure and this distorts community health.

“Furthermore death certificates cannot be issued for such victims that were not identified, so you could imagine families, children and wives who depend on them will not be able to claim their property and investments in formal institutions.

“I reckon there is huge fortune, perhaps running into billions of Naira in Nigeria banks that may never be accessed by families of deceased following disasters. If the right processes and procedures were followed, the event could be less traumatic on the families and friends of the deceased and their dignity and rights preserved even in death.”

Eze said that the principles of forensic medicine, a medico-legal practice and an investigative aspect of medicine, if applied in disasters could also help unravel its cause.

According to him: “Some signs and features we could see on bodies of victims may be able to tell us whether the disaster is really an accident or an event that appeared to be an accident or may even be staged to be an accident. “For example, the evidences pieced together can tell if there was an explosion inside the plane, for example, or if it crashed due to some other mechanisms. The nature and circumstance of each incident may be seen through peculiar features on the bodies of victims.

“Imagine you are investigating a crash and a known terrorist is identified, it may imply there may have been some terrorist’s activities resulting in the crash and it may help direct the investigation in appropriate circumstance. So the bodies are not just bodies that are dead, they are very important in determining the cause of death and circumstance of event.

“So there is a lot of prevention initiatives that could come from investigating bodies of victims, especially in ensuring emergency preparedness.”

Eze acknowledging that Nigeria had experienced unprecedented disasters both man-made and natural disasters, noted that many of the bodies in these incidences were not properly investigated and managed.

“In Nigeria, every thing is lumped under one headline, and the problem is we do not usually go into details. Unfortunately what has not been carefully studied and addressed will keep repeating itself and we continue to look in the wrong direction. This is our sad story but it does not have to remain that way. The forthcoming pan-African Forensic Conference will attempt to address these issues with some relevant stakeholders in Nigeria and across Africa,” he concluded.

Thursday 06 February 2014

http://www.tribune.com.ng/news2013/index.php/en/health-news/item/32682-expert-faults-nigeria%E2%80%99s-disaster-management-policy-on-corpses.html

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The 2004 Morecambe Bay cockling tragedy


Retired police chief Mick Gradwell led the probe into the 2004 cockling disaster in which 23 Chinese cocklers lost their lives. Operation Lund, as the investigation was called, was an enormously complex prosecution involving more than 1.5million pages of evidence. The trail eventually led to a Chinese gangmaster being found guilty of 21 counts of manslaughter and jailed for 14 years in March 2006. Reporter Michelle Blade spoke to Mick about the events of that fateful night and the ensuing police investigation.

Over an illustrious 30 year career, Mick Gradwell has worked on a series of high profile police investigations, including the Sophie Lancaster murder enquiry, the Haut de la Garenne child abuse investigation and the Morecambe Bay cockle pickers tragedy.

But in 2004, as senior investigating officer for Lancashire Constabulary, Mick Gradwell was thrown into the murky world of Snakehead gangs, and international people trafficking when 23 Chinese cockle pickers drowned in the bay.

Mick said: “I’m a Lancashire lad, used to dealing with crimes in Lancashire, not international organised crime gangs and human trafficking - its not what you expect, not on the landscaped shores of Morecambe bay.

“Until then I had investigated domestic murders, one punch murders, bad on bad murders.

“I was thrown into areas of the shellfish industry I didn’t know about. I didn’t know a cockle from a mussel. I didn’t know about safety issues within the industry, or Snakehead gangs.”

Mick was informed about the disaster the morning after the rescue operation.

As daylight came, eight bodies had been washed ashore - then Mick had another call saying the body count had gone up to 14.

Over time it became known that 23 people had died.

Mick said: “The crime scene was 120 square miles, there were vehicles and bodies and evidence in Morecambe, Liverpool and elsewhere.

“You get used to seeing a lot of horror and gore but seeing that many bodies who looked like they could wake up at some point was shocking.

“The investigation kicked off. We needed to find out where the cockles were going and who was organising the human trafficking.”

Police discovered how money was filtered down to 12 accounts in China from sub accounts in London.

The people who owned the accounts in China made millions.

But Fujian province, where the Chinese cocklers hailed from was one of the poorest places in the world.

Mick said: “Most of the family houses were just shacks. They are some of the poorest people in the world and they were grafting to send money back to their families.

“Most of them were farmers who were quite well qualified but had to get down in the dirt to raise money. The gangmasters tried to abuse people like that.

“One of the family members needed to go abroad to find work. They would have to pay £15-£20,000 to the Snakehead gang to get trafficked, in this case the UK. A large number of Chinese managed to illegally get into Britain, either on the back of a van or a plane.

“They would produce their passport and apply for asylum and told to come back in two weeks whilst their application was processed.

“The vast majority never went back. In 2003 cockles in the EU got the lurgy and became unfit for human consumption. The value of cockles increased greatly.

“Lin Mu Yung started the cockling enterprise which did really well.

“His English girlfriend didn’t speak Mandarin but looked after the illegal immigrants.

“They kitted the cocklers out with equipment and made sure they were looked after and safe. Lin Liang Ren was the cousin of Lin Mu Yung and was a far more nastier business manager and accountant.

“He started to cut things down and provided cheap waterproofs and bought eight year old Toyota Previa vehicles that wouldn’t get stuck in quicksand.

“There was a double tide on February 5.

“On the evening he sent 20 people out and they would two thirds fill a HGV. He would then leave the workers on the beach and return for the morning tide when they would fill up the rest of the HGV.

“When they set off from Liverpool one of the vehicles broke down and 35 people didn’t set off.

“If they had done, there would have been more deaths.

“It was the wrong end of the tide and the worst time you could have gone out cockling.

“Local cocklers were coming in and told the Chinese cocklers not to go out but because of the language differences they didn’t understand.

“A flat pick-up got stuck and was wiped out and it was quite clear he (Lin Liang Ren) had sent them out too late. By 7pm they were already goosed and it was all going wrong.
Lin Liang Ren rang his cousin and asked to be taken out of the area.

“Some of the 35 people out in the bay made their way back on foot to the car park.

“Lin Mu Yung’s girlfriend decided to ring the coastguard and kicked off the rescue.

“By this time it was way too late, 9.15pm. At 9.20pm one of the cocklers called 999 and you can hear them drowning.

“Only one guy, Li Hua, was saved at Priest Skear. He is still in witness protection.

“Lin Liang Ren never admitted anything - we had to prove it by identifying DNA, fingerprints, and using telephony analysis and forensic analysis.

“We had to seize the rent books and documents and prove he was the guy paying the money.

“We had to prove he was the guy who bought the vehicles.

“His fingerprints were on the credit card receipts used to buy equipment.

“The European cocklers said that he was the man in charge.

“There were thousands of telephone calls and the forged fishing permits had links to human trafficking.

“The trial was over six months long because he would never admit to anything.

“It was a huge investigation to send people to China to identify the deceased, and there were language differences and huge forensic accounting issues. It was a very tragic job but we had to offer justice to those who died.

“No matter what we did we were never going to bring a satisfactory conclusion to the job because all the families want is their loved one.

“It isn’t just a bit of paperwork and we do become aware of the personal tragedy and its effects.

“It was such a terrible tragedy, such a needless waste of life.”

Operation Lund won Britain’s top criminal justice award, the Justice Shield, in 2006.

The cockle pickers trial was one of the most complex ever staged in Lancashire.

Survivors who disappeared after the tragedy had to be tracked down, statements proved difficult to obtain because of language barriers and witnesses being fearful of gang reprisals and vast quantities of evidence had to be presented to the court.

New technology was introduced during the trial to provide the jury with location footage and video and audio evidence – with translations where appropriate.

In total, 23 lives were cruelly wasted in Morecambe Bay that night.

Nineteen of those who died were men, four were women, and all but one of them had children.

Two of the cocklers who were not found at the time, were later pronounced dead.

The skull of one of them, Liu Qin, was found eight years later. Their 13-year-old son was left orphaned.

The remains of Dong Xin Wu have never been found. One of the cocklers, Li Hua, made it on to a raised area of rocky sand called Priest Skear and was spotted by a helicopter crew and was picked up by the emergency services.

Li Hua was the only person to be rescued.

Chinese detectives and British police worked for three months after the tragedy to identify the victims.

They used post-mortem photographs and some of the cocklers’ meagre possessions found either on their bodies or on the foreshore. Investigating officers met with families in China and compared DNA samples from relatives.

All of the 23 people who perished were eventually named in May 2004.

When some of the cocklers’ bodies were returned to China, the Chinese government compounded the families’ grief and tried to teach them a callous lesson by getting soldiers to leave the coffins in the street. The families also had to contend with the snakehead gangleaders to whom they owed tens of thousands of pounds.

Thursday 06 February 2014

http://www.thevisitor.co.uk/news/local/slideshow-morecambe-bay-cockling-tragedy-who-were-the-victims-1-6417639

http://www.thevisitor.co.uk/news/morecambe-bay-cockling-tragedy-evil-world-of-snakehead-gangs-1-6417865

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