The tough task of bringing them home

IDENTIFYING the victims of the Bali Bombings was one of the most complicated post-disaster operations Australia has ever been involved in.

Tasmania Police Commander Tony Cerritelli was part of the Australian team that flew to Bali in the days after the 2002 bombings to help the investigation.

``It was catastrophic,'' Mr Cerritelli said.

``The damage that was caused, and the extent of the damage . . . it went beyond the bomb site.''

It took six months to identify all 202 victims, including 88 Australians.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Julia Gillard and former prime minister John Howard joined the family and friends of those killed at a memorial ceremony in Bali to mark the 10-year anniversary of the disaster.

Among those families were some who, 10 years earlier, sat down with Mr Cerritelli to list details of their loved one's appearance which might lead to their identification.

``We work for the family, we have got to work hard for them because we want to make sure they can farewell their family members,'' Mr Cerritelli said. ``We take care of them.''

Mr Cerritelli joined Tasmania Police in 1986 and qualified as a disaster victim identifier in 2000.

He is currently the deputy chairman of the Australasian Disaster Victim Identity Committee and will start a two-year term as chairman later this year.

Mr Cerritelli, who also helped identify victims of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, said the post-bombing operation was particularly complex because of the level of trauma involved and the fact that body recovery and identification was occurring alongside the crime scene investigation and the ongoing threat of a follow-up act of terrorism.

Police and specialists from 30 countries joined in the task.

`We had a very good working relationship with the Indonesians,' he said.

`There's obviously a little bit of tension when you first move into a foreign area, but eventually they realise we are all there for the same reasons.'

Mr Cerritelli and other volunteers from Tasmania searched the bomb site, worked with families and helped piece together clues to make an identification.

Investigators relied heavily on DNA, dental records and fingerprints to confirm identity.

Any match was confirmed by a specialist and certified by an Indonesian Government board.

`It's a very methodical process, and it's done that way because we can't afford to make mistakes,'' Mr Cerritelli said.

`A mis-identification would just add another layer of grief.'

Some specialists were overcome by the trauma.

`I have seen it where a couple of our people fell over because the connection was made between the victims and the families,' he said.

`As a general rule we try to keep staff separate between dealing with the victims and families on the same case, otherwise that emotional connection is made.'

But Mr Cerritelli said the thought of the victims kept investigators focused.

`These people are innocent people who have been the subject of a terrible event. The aim is to get them back home so the families can get on and grieve.'

Friday 12 October 2012

http://www.examiner.com.au/story/394766/the-tough-task-of-bringing-them-home/?src=rss

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19 killed, 1,500 fishermen missing in Bangladesh storm

At least 19 people were killed and an estimated 1,500 fishermen are missing after tropical storms smashed into Bangladesh's southern coastal islands and districts early Thursday, police said.

Police said at least 1,500 mud, tin and straw-built houses were also leveled in the storms that swept Bhola, Hatiya and Sandwip Islands and half a dozen coastal districts after Wednesday midnight.

At the worst-hit island of Hatiya, at least seven people were killed after they were buried under their houses or hit by fallen trees, said local police chief Moktar Hossain. More than 1,000 houses were flattened.

"More than 100 fishing trawlers, each carrying at least 10 fishermen, have been missing since the storm," he told AFP, calling it one of the most powerful in decades.

Many fishermen are expected to have taken shelter in other remote islands in the Bay of Bengal or in the neighboring Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest.

In the past, many fishermen thought to be missing from storms returned home to coastal villages a week or two later.

Four people were killed in Bhola, three each in Sandwip and Companyganj and two at Char Jabbar, police said.

The police chief of Bhola district, Bashir Ahmed, told AFP more than 500 fishermen were missing from the country's largest island and at least 500 mud and straw-built houses were leveled by the sudden storm.

Bangladesh's weather office forecast heavy rain in the coastal region and advised fishermen to take care near the shore, but there was no major storm warning.

"We only got the warning signal number three. But the storm was so powerful, the weather office should have hoisted the signal number seven or eight," said Ahmed, referring to the intensity of the storm on a scale of ten.

"It caught the fishermen and coastal people by surprise. Till now we haven't had any reports from the missing fishermen," he said, adding the authorities had sent relief to thousands of affected people.

Friday 12 October 2012

Read more: http://india.nydailynews.com/newsarticle/2690d29e5366fe9b9b28a6f9a60620fb/bangladesh-storm-kills-19-hundreds-of-fishermen-missing#ixzz296IxHcqZ

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Government asked to ensure burial of seven Ivorian refugees

Government has been asked to ensure the immediate burial of seven decomposed bodies of Ivorian refugees deposited at the Half Assini Government Hospital mortuary, to avoid an outbreak of epidemic.

The Assembly Member for Amanzule Electoral Area, in Half Assini in the Western Region, Mr John Kwaw Ekoboe, made the appeal through the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Half Assini on Thursday.

He said the Ivoirians died in a bizarre circumstance at the former Eagle Star Transit Camp at Elubo in September last year, and their bodies were deposited at the mortuary by the police for investigations.

Mr Ekoboe claimed that the police did not allow for the treatment of the bodies before depositing them at the mortuary, because according to the police that could interfere or undermine their investigations.

The Assembly Member said the bodies had decomposed and emitting bad scent because of continuous power outages in the area, and explained that the people could not bury the bodies because they were those of refugees, covered by international law.

Meanwhile a staff of the hospital, who spoke to the GNA on condition of anonymity, confirmed the story, and said because of the current situation, the hospital has decided not to accept bodies brought there by the police.

He cited an instance where the body of a man, who drowned in the Abbey lagoon, and was brought to the Half Assini Government Hospital, was rejected and sent to the Effia Nkwanta Regional hospital for autopsy.

Friday 12 October 2012

http://m.myjoyonline.com/pages/edition/news/201210/95344.php

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Agonising wait ends as seven factory fire victims identified

News of the death of loved ones in the Baldia garments factory fire last month must have been devastating. What is equally agonising is the wait many families have had to face for the identification of victims burnt beyond recognition. For seven families, that wait ended on Thursday.

The Edhi Foundation received the bodies of seven victims after DNA tests, and sent them to their families.

The victims identified are Mohammad Hanif, resident of Orangi Town, Mohammad Asif, resident of Baldia Town, Mohammad Imran, resident of Nazimabad, Mohammad Israr, resident of Baldia Town, Amna Bibi, wife of Allah Bukhsh, resident of Baldia Town, Masood ul Hassan, resident of Federal B Area, and Mohammad Faizan, resident of Baldia Town.

Edhi officials insist they received 202 bodies at their Sohrab Goth morgue, while government officials have put the death toll at 259.

They said that days after the fire, which broke out in Ali Enterprises at around 6pm on September 11 and raged for 15 hours, many families came to collect the bodies of their loved ones. Though the corpses were “impossible to identify”, officials said many people fought over them as they had no clue about their loved ones.

Edhi spokesperson Anwar Kazmi said they had the bodies of 39 victims, of which 32 were still with them.

The SHC had directed the provincial government earlier this month to expedite the process of conducting DNA tests on unidentified victims. A division bench, headed by Justice Maqbool Baqir, also told the relevant authorities to submit complete details of those killed or injured in the tragedy and provide monetary compensation to their families.

Friday 12 October 2012

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-4-137041-Agonising-wait-ends-as-seven-factory-fire-victims-identified

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Haitians turning to Islam in wake of quake

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — School teacher Darlene Derosier lost her home in the 2010 earthquake that devastated her country. Her husband died a month later after suffering what she said was emotional trauma from the quake. She and her two daughters now live in tents outside the capital of Port-au-Prince, surrounded by thousands of others made homeless and desperate by the disaster.

What’s helped pull her through all the grief, she said, has been her faith, but not of the Catholic, Protestant or even Voodoo variety that have predominated in this island country. Instead, she’s converted to a new religion here, Islam, and built a small neighbourhood mosque out of cinderblocks and plywood, where some 60 Muslims pray daily.

Islam has won a growing number of followers in this impoverished country, especially after the catastrophe two years ago that killed some 300,000 people and left millions more homeless. A capital where church attendance is so prevalent that the streets echo with Christian hymns on Sundays now has at least five mosques, a Muslim parliament member and a nightly local television program devoted to Islam.

The disaster drew in aid groups from around the world, including Islamic Relief USA, which built 200 shelters and a secondary school with 20 classrooms.

"After the earthquake we had a lot of people join," said Robert Dupuy, an imam or Islamic spiritual leader in the capital. "We were organized. We had space in the mosques to receive people and food to feed them."

Derosier said she was drawn to the religion’s preaching of self-discipline, emphasis on education and attention to cleanliness. The constant washing, she said, helps her and other Muslims avoid cholera, the waterborne illness that health officials say has sickened nearly 600,000 people and killed more than 7,500 others since surfacing after the quake.

"This is a victory for me," the 43-year-old woman said about her post-quake conversion. The former Protestant spoke in the tent-filled courtyard of her home, her face framed by a clean, black head scarf. "It’s a victory that I received peace and found guidance."

In part, the Muslim community’s growth can be attributed to the return of expatriates who adopted the faith in the U.S., said Kishner Billy, owner of the island’s Telemax TV station and host of the nightly program "Haiti Islam."

Billy and some others believe that Islam’s Haitian past goes back before the country’s independence in 1804, and that a Jamaican slave and Voodoo priest named Boukman who led the slave revolt that ousted French colonizers was actually a Muslim.

"Islam is coming back to Haiti to stay," said Billy, who says he converted from Christianity 20 years ago. "Future generations, my sons and daughters, will speak about Islam."

There are no firm statistics on the number of Muslims in Haiti, just as there are no reliable figures for many things in the country, including Port-au-Prince’s exact population.

A 2009 study by the Pew Research Center on the world’s Muslim population estimated that Haiti had about 2,000 devotees. Islamic leaders in the country insist the figure is much higher and growing.

Islam is hardly unknown in the Caribbean; countries such as Trinidad & Tobago, Suriname and Guyana have significant Muslim populations. Many of those nations have strong roots in countries such as India and Indonesia where Islam is widespread.

The ancestors of Haitians, by contrast, were brought largely from non-Muslim areas of Africa. Haiti’s French colonial rulers also imported their Christian beliefs.

The recent growth of Islam, as well as other new religions, shows Haiti is modernizing and becoming more pluralistic, said Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, a professor of Africology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

"Inroads made by Islam (and by extension, by Mormonism and Rastafarianism) tell me that Haiti is very much a product of this century, subject to all winds, ill-winds and otherwise, that blow over the Caribbean nation-states," Bellegarde-Smith wrote in an email.

Rosedany Bazille, a 39-year-old teacher who converted several months after the earthquake, said she had felt rudderless before embracing the religion and was looking for a way forward.

"Islam can put people on the right path and show them who’s God," she said.

Some Haitian Muslims belong to the Nation of Islam, a U.S.-based branch of the religion that preaches black self-determination. Some local members converted while serving time in U.S. prisons before being deported back to Haiti. The group’s leader, Louis Farrakhan, visited the country for the first time last year.

The decision to convert has made some targets of discrimination.

The Haitian government doesn’t recognize Islam as an official religion, nor does it honour Muslim marriages. Wearing the skullcaps or flowing head scarves typical of the religion can draw stares and finger-pointing. Derosier said her neighbours gossip that she’s evil.

Voodoo, a blend of West African religions created by slaves during the colonial period, has long been a popular faith in the country, with elements followed even by some of the 85 per cent of the population who claim Christian beliefs. Voodoo was once so commonly embraced that the notorious dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier used it to terrify and control the masses.

Most Christian Haitians identify themselves as Roman Catholics. A priest, the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was elected president in 1990 by opposing the hereditary dictatorship that continued with Francois’ son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

With so much still wrong in Haiti, the need for Islam couldn’t be greater, said Billy. Two months ago, he launched his live talk show to educate his compatriots about his adopted faith.

"Haiti has gone astray. It can’t produce anything," said Billy. "Right now Haitians just want a visa to go the United States, to Canada. They don’t want to stay in Haiti."

With a tapestry of Mecca and praying crowds as a backdrop to his TV show one recent evening, Billy and his co-host Ruben Caries invited watchers to send questions about Islam via text messages.

Billy’s BlackBerry buzzed with missives, including this one in Creole: "M vle vini Muslim" — "I want to be a Muslim."

Friday 12 October 2012

Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/life/Haitians+turning+Islam+wake+quake/7371374/story.html#ixzz295Csi77c

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