Nigeria: Decomposing bodies endanger ecosystem in Bakassi

There is increasing danger of environmental and ecological problems arising from the threats posed by decomposing bodies of Nigerians that were attacked, killed and thrown into the Bakassi waters last week as they are reportedly being washed ashore.

Fishes, birds, animals and other insects are said to be feasting on these bloated bodies and the stench oozing out is said to be disturbing to the people left behind at the settlement, which Bakassi leadership insists is the traditional homeland of the Bakassi people.

Last week, Cameroonian authorities stormed the Efut Obot Ikot settlement where Nigerians of Bakassi origin lived even as they had forcibly accepted the sovereignty of Cameroun.

According to reports, 1800 of them, including 600 were displaced and presently the children have been exposed to severe dangers even as many are now without parents and wives without husbands having been killed or missed during flight, warranting the Chairman of the Bakassi Local Government Council of Cross River State, Dr Ekpo Ekpo Bassey to raise alarm when he spoke to journalists.

He confirmed that there were more than five people that were killed by the gendarmes when they invaded the settlement, adding that at least 11 have been declared missing.

He said that following the forceful ejection of over 1800 Nigerians from that settlement last week by the Cameroonian authorities, the health of 600 children now identified have become exposed to health hazards and strongly appealed to the Nigerian government and international communities to urgently come to their aid in order to avoid epidemic.

"We strongly appeal to kind-hearted individuals, Nigerian government and foreign agencies to look into the plight of women particularly the identified 600 Nigerian children whose health has been endangered as a result of the forceful ejection of their parents from their traditional homeland in the Bakassi peninsula.

"Their forceful ejection has now produced refugee problem for the Cross River State government and in particular, Bakassi LGA which shares a common boundary with the Cameroon Republic", he said.

He was worried that the killing which was becoming continual was also an outright violation of the Green Tree Agreement of the International Court of Justice which ceded the peninsula to Cameroon.

As at yesterday when former special adviser to ex President Olusegun Obasanjo, Senator Florence Ita-Giwa, alongside paramount ruler of the Council, Etinyin HRM Etim Okon Edet, officials of State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) and others visited the displaced peoples camp at St Mark Primary School, Ikot Eyo Edem near Akpabuyo LGA to donate foods and other relief items, the decomposing bodies were yet to be attended to thereby raising much concerns.

At their meeting with the displaced Nigerians, Senator Ita-Giwa again emphasized the need for the people to be properly resettled in their chosen place in order to avoid continual maiming and slaughtering of Bakassi indigenes in Cameroon Republic.

According to one of the affected persons, 65 year old Elder Archibong Edet who spoke to some journalists, he confirmed that when the Cameroon military attacked them in an effort to evict them forcefully, they severely manhandled and maimed many of them and others killed.

He said that some of them that tried to resist because they wanted to look back to pack their vital belongings were shot by the gendarmes. "At least, 10 of us, including women and children were shot and killed. Their bodies were thrown into the rivers by the Cameroonian soldiers", he said.

Mrs Affiong Nsa said she had a farm close to the estuary; that she could count some bodies that were brought out by the sea and that these bodies were still there by the time she took flight to avoid been arrested or raped by the gendarmes.

While praying that the attack should stop, she appealed to the authorities to ensure that the bodies are removed so that they no longer pose dangers to the health of the people or to marine lives.

Thursday 4 April 2013

http://allafrica.com/stories/201304040442.html

6 more bodies found after pirate attack in Bay of Bengal; toll 27

Six more bodies of the fishermen killed in last week’s pirate attack were recovered from the Bay of Bengal in the last two days, taking the death toll to 27.

Thousands of fishermen living in the coastal villages under Banshkhali upazila have braved the turbulent sea for fishing on engine-run wooden boats all their lives, but the recent attack by pirates has shaken their courage.

They are now thinking of leaving the profession for lack of security.

Fishermen are no strangers to pirate attacks. Many of them have experiences of torture or kidnap in the past, but the brutal killings of so many of their fellows came as a shock they have never known.

No one knows for sure why the pirates had to kill all these fishermen, but relatives say it was perhaps because some of the pirates were known to the fishermen.

Armed robbers on Monday swooped on the fishermen when they were returning home after fishing. The robbers kidnapped 31 fishermen along with two trawlers. The four other bodies are still missing.

Most of the victims are from Guillakhali, Boloimajhirpara, Tekpara and Gondamara villages under Banshkhali in Chittagong. Meanwhile, mourning for the shell-shocked family members, relatives and neighbours of the victims seems never to end.

For Jannatul Ferdous, wife of victim Nur Islam of Tekpara, the trauma is insufferable. Four months ago, her husband had been kidnapped by pirates. He had been released a few days later on ransom of Tk one lakh.

Nur Islam had not gone fishing for the last four months; but he had at his home mouths to feed. And the sea was his only resort to look to for that.

“He was hesitant about going fishing all these months, but necessity forced him to return to the sea,” said Jannatul, who was born and raised in a fisherman’s family.

Before leaving home on Monday, Nur Islam promised to Jannatul that it would be his “last trip to the sea” and that he would find some other work on return.

Those words keep coming back to Jannatul.“I won’t let my son to go fishing on the sea,” she said.

Abdullah, 46, of the same village has lost a brother at the hands of the pirates. Himself a fisherman, he has two more brothers who live on fishing. But Abdullah has seen enough.

“After their return [from the sea] I won’t let them fish again,” he told this correspondent.

NO SECURITY ON SEA

More than three hundred fishing boats go sailing from an area stretching from Farir Mukh Ghat to Sarkarbazar of Shekherkhil. Fishermen say they get no security from any agencies in case of pirate attacks.

Nurul Kabir, a fisherman, says pirates usually kidnap fishermen and demand ransom.

He adds that police can find them by tracking the phone calls of those who demand ransom.

Conducted, Officer-in-charge Kamrul Islam of Banshkhali Police Station said they were looking for the pirates involved in last week’s incident.

Lt Commander Abdullah Yusuf, staff officer of Bangladesh Coast Guard’s east zone, said it was difficult for them to respond to emergency call for help due to manpower shortages.

But, he added, they deployed patrol teams in different areas, including Chittagong Port outer anchorage, Banshkhali, Maheshkhali, Cox’s Bazaar, Kutubdia channel and St Martin’s Island.

Thursday 4 April 2013

http://www.thedailystar.net/beta2/news/6-more-bodies-found-toll-27/

Border Patrol seeing immigrant deaths spike in Rio Grande Valley Sector

As warmer temperatures make their way to the Rio Grande Valley, U.S. Border Patrol officials are seeing a rise in the number of immigrants dying amid their quest for the American dream.

In the first three months of 2013, Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector have encountered the bodies of 70 immigrants who have died trekking through the brush while trying to circumvent checkpoints or who drowned in the waters of the Rio Grande. That compares with 150 for all of 2012, and 66 for all of 2011.

Another dismaying trend is an increase in sexual assaults against immigrants by human smugglers, said Henry Mendiola, Border Patrol spokesman. While the Border Patrol doesn’t have statistics for such attacks, he said field agents have seen an increase in those cases.

“Human smugglers don’t value human life,” he said. “Their victims are just cargo that can be used and sold without any concern for their well-being. They are only thinking of profit.”

‘The elements’

While the Rio Grande proves a dangerous adversary with treacherous currents, the deadlier threat has been the harsh terrain through which many have trekked in an effort to avoid the Border Patrol checkpoints in Falfurrias and Sarita, Mendiola said. Those checkpoints sit along the main highways heading out of the Rio Grande Valley.

“People don’t realize the dangers that come with walking through unknown terrain,” Mendiola said.

Human smugglers typically cram immigrants who have entered the country illegally into stash houses for days, and once there they are given little food or water before they are moved north, Mendiola said. That means that when many set out, they are already malnourished and dehydrated.

“They begin their journey in a weakened state as it is,” he said. “There have been times when we have had to rescue our own agents who have gotten lost and fallen ill from the elements.”

Brushy areas, like the routes many take to get around the Falfurrias checkpoint in Brooks County, hold many hidden dangers, said Rafael Hernandez, the leader of Angeles del Desierto. The rescue group searches for missing immigrants and too often ends up finding their bodies.

Hernandez, who is based in California, began taking a closer look at the Rio Grande Valley in 2012 after receiving numerous calls from people saying their loved ones went missing as they left the Rio Grande Valley.

While the number of immigrants who die along the way continues to climb, the actual numbers may be much higher since bodies are generally found along transited areas or by coincidence, Hernandez said.

“There are large expanses of land in that area that haven’t been searched,” Hernandez said in Spanish.

Hernandez has reached out — unsuccessfully — to various ranchers to get access to their properties to try to bring closure to the hundreds of families that wait for a phone call to learn the fate of their loved one.

“Getting lost, the heat, the wildlife, the lack of water can easily kill a person,” he said.

Thursday 4 April 2013

http://www.themonitor.com/news/local/article_b1526bae-9c11-11e2-b5fb-001a4bcf6878.html

Africa: The cost of death

Interesting insight into burial rituals and community impact in Africa:

One family in Nigeria that had to bury their father seven times because he was a prominent man. This is in accordance with tradition.

Six good cows and a goat were slaughtered because the man had six male children and one female child. Each of his children had to conduct his/her own burial ceremony for their late father. This was mandatory and they would otherwise not be allowed to partake in village activities and the villagers would snub the family's future functions.

Cost of living has escalated; multiply that with the global recession and the steep poverty datum line. Poverty is a worldwide pandemic that has seen many governments come to crumble at its stronghold. There is also the issue of bogadi, which is also very expensive to an extent that a wedding has absolutely been a commoditised profit making scheme. To add salt to injury, the cost of dying is also one of those occurrences that leave the family robbed of its wealth within just a week. Insurance companies have also seized this loophole, in a sense that people pay money to subscribe for lifetime policies that will in turn assist them with funeral costs in the future. For some it's a waste of money, its true, but the rich can afford such expensive practices, so as to have prolific and dignified funerals.

Nowadays when somebody dies, the bereaved mourn not only due to the loss but the high cost of the funeral. Families come together for fund raising meetings to meet the cost of the funerals. Some even prefer that the bereaved save some money, which can be used in the event that they pass away. We put ourselves under unnecessary pressure because we are trying to meet societal 'standards' of how a funeral should be. Why spend all that money on someone who is dead when you couldn't lend them a penny when they were alive?

There are many people suffering from different diseases, some in the hospital, some at home, some of them can't even afford drugs but as soon as they are confirmed dead their funerals are turned into a celebration of sorts. In Setswana tradition when someone dies, members of that household will cook for those who come to grieve with them; neighbours, friends and extended family members contribute food and other things to lessen the burden on the bereaved family. However, people start strolling into the bereaved' house all week and expect to be fed breakfast, lunch and dinner! Some can even call you and ask you what variety of food and drinks are on offer, forgetting that death is a time for mourning and not merriment. At the funeral some people wear expensive Armani suits and come to show off their well-established city lives. It's funny when you see some scampering for food, and others taking the meat to their homes while some would even show up with their ravenously-skeletal dogs that often end up fighting and disturbing the services.

Why wasn't that money spent on the deceased while they were still alive, why do we find it hard to celebrate our loved ones while they are still alive? Some communities in the northern part of Africa have banned elaborate ceremonies during burial. One stipulates that if you must 'refresh' attendees, then it must be only tea and bread. That just goes to show how people have suffered concerning high burial costs. It's not only just a waste of money, but resources, time and energy. Just imagine the money, time and space consumed in the name of burial ceremony in most cases. The Anglican Communion in Zimbabwe dioceses has long banned expensive burials. They did it by making sure burials are done on weekdays instead of weekends so as to attract less people that will expect to eat and drink. Also dead bodies get buried within two weeks else the Church will not partake in the burial. Although the church may not have any right dictating how people should bury their loved ones, their primary responsibility is to perform the requiem ritual and go. The deceased's family can opt to bring in a philharmonic band from overseas or rent fleas to mourn their dead, it's their business and not anyone's. However, burials are moments of grief and its completely different from a wedding or birthday celebration, so I see absolutely no reason why it should be ambiguous. It should be as simple as possible, but today its a joyful moment, if there is little cash in the family they say it is shameful.

Thursday 4 April 2013

http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?sid=6&aid=223&dir=2013/April/Wednesday3

Death toll rises in PNG bus crash

he death toll in what local authorities have described as "the worst road accident" in Papua New Guinea's Western Highlands has risen to 25.

Seventeen men, seven women and a toddler were among those killed when a bus they were travelling in ran off a cliff and plunged 50 metres into the bank of a river, 20 minutes drive from Mt Hagan in PNG's Western Highlands province.

33 passengers, all from a village in the district of Baiyer in Western Highlands, were on board the 25-seater PMV bus.

Director for medical services at Mt Hagen General Hospital, Dr Guapo Kiagi, told Radio Australia 23 of the victims died on impact and the driver survived the crash but later died on arrival at the hospital.

One other woman was treated for a ruptured spleen and died this morning.

Seven more people remain in a critical condition and one person has been treated and discharged.

Dr Kiagi says it looks like the driver was severely overworked and had had very little sleep in the days preceding the accident.

It's believed he fell asleep at the wheel.

Locals and relatives say they were heading to the Kagamuga airport in the capital, Mt Hagen, to pick up the casket of a villager who died in the PNG capital, Port Moresby.

PNG's local newspapers, the National and Post Courier, have carried horrific pictures of locals and police retrieving and lining up the remains to identify the bodies.

The National newspaper has reported the Western Highlands Provincial Police Commander, Martin Lakari as describing the deaths as "PNG's worst road accident involving a public motor vehicle".

Local ward councillor Kuri Rani told the National he was supposed to travel on the bus but decided not to at the last minute.

"They are my people from the Epika tribe... and it's a big loss to the rest of my tribesmen," he said.

"We were all travelling into town to pick up a casket and didn't know such a thing would happen."

Police are continuing their investigations into the possible cause.

Several years ago, 17 people died in a similar accident along the same stretch of the road.

Thursday 4 April 2013

http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/article/16545524/death-toll-rises-in-png-bus-crash/

Now in China’s rivers: Decomposing humans

“Based on our overall measuring results in past years, water quality not only remained normal, but in some cases has even improved,”said Li Lei, deputy environmental bureau chief of Lanzhou, last week.

The reassuring words, carried by aHong Kong newspaper, were in response to a controversy triggered by Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post, which last October reportedthat since the 1960s at least 10,000 human corpses were found in an 80-kilometer stretch of the Yellow River in and near Lanzhou, the capital of inland Gansu province.

On Thursday, Lanzhou authorities announced that about 100 bodies are retrieved from the Yellow River each year. That figure, however, is well wide of the mark. Just one “body fisher,” Wei Jinpeng,collects about 80 to 100 corpses each year from his spot 18 miles downriver from Lanzhou, and he is just one of many involved in this profitable, but gruesome, trade. The Shanghai paper also reported that in recent times there has been an annual increase of 200 to 300 corpses retrieved in and around Lanzhou.

The presence of decomposing humans in the waterway is not just limited to the area around the Gansu capital. Body fishers work most of the Yellow River, Asia’s second longest, from west of Lanzhou to Shandong province at its mouth.

Corpse-filled waterways in China are not exactly a new problem, yet they have attracted heightened attention in recent weeks because of the dumping of more than 16,000 pig carcasses—many of them disease-ridden—into the Huangpu River, which runs through the middle of Shanghai and provides more than a fifth of the city’s drinking water. Farmers also unloaded more than a thousand lifeless ducks into the Nan River in Sichuan province.

China’s great rivers are becoming morgues for humans, birds, and animals. Wei Jinpeng, the busy Lanzhou body fisher, keeps his inventory of dead people floating in a Yellow River cove facedown until customers buy the remains of their loved ones.

That practice slows decomposition, but it also further contaminates the river. Mr. Li, the Lanzhou environmental official, claims rotting corpses have not affected the water quality of the Yellow River, but his assertions do not ring true. “If these bodies are left untreated in the water to decompose, the ensuing impact of pollution is far more severe than that caused by the dumping of household waste,” states a 2005 report from Daxia Hydropower Company, referring to the Yellow River. An October 2012 article in the semi-official Global Timesdocuments how river water, polluted by human remains and mixed with well water, is unsafe for drinking.

And it is not only the water in the Yellow River, which flows through nine provinces, that is at risk from contamination. Incredibly, bodies, prior to identification, are allowed to float in at least one reservoir in the Lanzhou area.

The Lanzhou government cremates some unclaimed remains and notes it already has procedures to deal with the situation. Yet the reality is that, for the most part, the city turns a blind eye and has done little since 2006, when it promised to crack down on body fishing.

Why the slow response? As Daxia’s 2005 report states, “procedures are complicated to properly dispose of these corpses, so many law enforcement departments are unwilling to get involved in the problem.”

How can law enforcement remain uninterested? The Global Times believes crime accounts for only 5% of the bodies. Lanzhou authorities downplay foul play even more. Huang Xiaoping, the city’s police spokesman, said accidents or suicides were to blame. Of the 417 corpses fished out between 2008 and last year, only two were the result of crimes, he said.

Those statistics fly in the face of circumstantial evidence. “Most of the bodies that are not claimed by relatives are female migrant workers who had moved to Lanzhou,” Wei Jinpeng told McClatchy Newspapers. “Most of them have been murdered.”

The authorities obviously cannot solve a problem they refuse to acknowledge. As a consequence, decomposing humans continue to plague Yellow River communities. Lanzhou officials, for instance, do not in fact stop body fishers from cutting loose unclaimed corpses and letting the current take them away, thereby contaminating downstream water.

In China, the zombies float, not walk.

Thursday 4 April 2013

http://www.namviet.us/blog/now-in-chinas-rivers-decomposing-humans/#.UVzplZP9aCA

Bodies recovered in Tibet landslide rises to 66, 17 still missing

Rescuers dug out 66 bodies of the 83 workers buried in a huge landslide at a gold mine in Tibet as China on Wednesday released the names of the victims of which only two were local Tibetans.

Rescuers had pulled 66 bodies out of the debris so far, five-and-a-half days after the landslide swept through workers' camps of the Jiama Copper Polymetallic Mine, official media reported.

The government also released the names, genders and registered permanent addresses of all 83 victims of the landslide.

According to a rescue headquarters statement, 27 of the 83 mine workers who have been confirmed dead or are still buried under rocks and mud were natives of northeastern China's Jilin province and 26 were from the northwestern Shaanxi province.

Thirteen were from southwestern Guizhou province, six were from the neighbouring province of Sichuan, and three were from northeastern China's Liaoning Province.

Two were from a village in Gyangze county of Tibet and two came from the municipality of Chongqing and the remaining four were from provinces of Hebei, Henan, Shandong and Heilongjiang in the mainland.

Of the 83, four were women. The mine is run by Tibet Huatailong Mining Development Co Ltd, a subsidiary of the country's largest gold producer, China National Gold Group Corporation.

Overseas Tibetan groups have accused the company of aggressively carrying out the mining disregarding the environmental dangers. They also accused the government of employing more workers from mainland and few from Tibet.

Thursday 4 April 2013

http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/China/66-bodies-retrieved-in-Tibet-landslide-17-still-missing/Article1-1036876.aspx