Wednesday 5 June 2013

More remains of genocide victims found in Bugesera


A mass grave containing remains of eight Genocide victims was discovered in a residential area in Nemba Village in Bugesera District on Monday.

Vincent de Paul Rukonge, a resident, said the victims could have been killed while fleeing the pogrom to Burundi.

"This area was not a habitant at the time of the Genocide. It was a woodland, so the victims could have been intercepted while fleeing to Burundi," he said.

Nemba Sector neighbours two districts in Burundi.

"This is disheartening. The remains were dug out by tractors upgrading village infrastructure. I am struggling to come to terms with what I saw. I'm one of those who gathered the remains; I still feel a chill in my body," Rukonge said.

He prayed government to give such victims, whose relatives cannot be traced, a special cemetery.

"The clothes and bodies of the victims could be identified if they had relatives, but it is next to impossible tracing relatives of unidentified remains," Rukonge said.

Identify mass graves

Bugesera mayor Louis Rwagaju confirmed the incident and urged those who know where remains of victims yet to be found were buried to tell authorities so they (the victims) are given a decent burial.

Rwagaju said there were many unknown places where victims were buried in 1994.

"This is one of the challenges we face; not all places where the Tutsi died are known. It is thus our challenge to continue challenging Genocide perpetrators or witnesses to be courageous enough to tell us the truth," Rwagaju said.

Bugesera is one of the districts where the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi started from.

Wednesday 5 June 2013

http://allafrica.com/stories/201306051143.html

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38 dead in Sudan road crash


At least 38 people died in Sudan Tuesday in one of the country's worst road accidents in years when a bus collided with a truck, police said, blaming the accident on speeding.

"Because of a crash this morning between a bus and a truck south of El Gutaina town in White Nile state, 38 people died and others were injured," a police statement said.

It did not give the number of people hurt but said they were taken to hospital in El Gutaina, about 100 kilometres (62 miles) south of Khartoum, to be treated for various injuries.

The bus was travelling from Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman to El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state, when it collided with the truck heading the opposite way, police said.

"The accident happened because of the high speeds of the two vehicles," said traffic police General Abdurahman Hassan Abdurahman.

After the crash, Abdurahman said police would step up enforcement by distributing 25 additional radar units to monitor speeds on the impoverished nation's highways.

Last December 33 people were killed and 24 injured when two inter-city buses collided about halfway between Khartoum and Wad Medani, southeast of the capital.

That crash followed complaints by city bus drivers in Khartoum that Sudan's surging inflation and sinking currency had driven maintenance costs out of control.

Last October 13 people died and 26 were injured when a passenger bus blew a tyre and collided with a minibus on the road to Wad Medani.

A crash between a bus and a truck south of Khartoum killed 21 people in April 2009.

Wednesday 5 June 2013

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/africa/38-dead-in-Sudan-road-crash/-/1066/1872780/-/6vkcq6/-/index.html

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Red Cross demonstrates disaster app


The Red Cross has a free app that alerts you to all types of disasters (tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires), plus information on first aid and where to find shelter.

From your mobile phone, call **REDCROSS (**73327677) and you will receive a link to download the iPhone / Android app or visit iTunes or Google Play app stores.

The applications feature step-by-step instructions to help you know what to do even if the cell towers and TVs are down.

You will also find safety tips for everything, from severe weather to what you need to know if you are ever in a situation where someone may be drowning or choking.

"We're really trying to focus on making skill training more available," says, Gary Striar, Chief Executive Officer of the Northeastern American Red Cross.

You can prioritize actions for before, during, and after emergency situations, and it requires no mobile connectivity.

The applications also come with flashlights and audible sirens that go off automatically even if the app is closed. There are currently six separate apps you can download:

1) Tornado App
2) Hurricane App
3) Shelter Finder App
4) First Aid App
5) Earthquake App
6) Wildfire App

You can also let friends and family know you're safe with one touch. The "I'm Safe" notification allows users to broadcast reassurance to loved ones that they are out of harms way. This notification is easily sharable through social media, text and e-mail.

The applications provide an opportunity to prepare for the worst by learning how to assemble an emergency kit in the event of power outages or evacuations.

It also allows you to learn how to make and practice an emergency plan. "It's free, it's easy and it doesn't take too much time," adds Striar. "People can just go to these apps and very quickly learn basic skills in terms of first aid and how to prepare for disasters. There are great video tutorials and check lists available."

The applications are available for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices.

Wednesday 5 June 2013

http://www.cbs6albany.com/news/features/featured/stories/red-cross-demonstrates-disaster-app-836.shtml

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Amnesty Int'l: Disappearances in Mexico a 'crisis'


The number of unsolved disappearances in Mexico constitutes a human rights crisis, Amnesty International said Tuesday, citing what it called a systematic failure by police and prosecutors to investigate thousands of cases that have piled up since 2006.

Rupert Knox, Amnesty's Mexico investigator, said relatives are often forced to search for missing loved ones themselves, sometimes at considerable risk.

Adding insult to injury, Knox said police and prosecutors often don't even bother to use the information that relatives dig up. Instead, police routinely assume that the missing are caught up in Mexico's drug cartel conflicts.

"They are stigmatized, they are treated with disdain, and the typical thing is to say the victims were members of criminal gangs," Knox said. "That is a demonstration of the negligence that has allowed this problem to grow into a national scandal and a human rights crisis."

The federal government says some 26,000 people have been reported missing since the government launched an offensive against drug cartels in late 2006, though officials have said the true number is probably lower, because some people reported missing have since been found or accounted for but never taken off the list.

Brenda Rangel is the sister of Hector Rangel, who disappeared along with two friends in 2009 after being stopped by police for a traffic violation and was never seen again. She is sure her brother wasn't involved in criminal activity. A young businessman, he had gone to the northern state of Coahuila, which is a hotbed of the Zetas drug gang, to collect a payment from a client.

Rangel says her brother last called to say he was in police custody, and she said the family has given authorities the number of the squad car, and even the names of the policemen involved in the detention. But she said prosecutors told her the officers were fired from the local police force in Monclova, Coahuila, and couldn't be located. In Mexico, it is not uncommon for local policemen to work for drug gangs.

Nearing the fourth year in her brother's disappearance, that kind of shrugging response is driving Rangel and her family to desperation, and into danger, since they can't let it rest.

"We have received death threats," she said, adding: "I have run risks, I have gone into safe houses, I have had to disguise myself in different ways to look for my brother."

One by one, other parents and siblings of missing Mexicans stood up and recounted their horror stories: cases in which authorities themselves, police or the military, appear to have been involved in the disappearances.

Mexico's government announced last week that it is creating a special unit to search for missing people. But the unit has only 12 federal investigators and a group of federal police agents to cover all the cases.

Knox said such agencies have been tried before in Mexico but have accomplished little, in part because they have lacked the resources, manpower and authority to really perform their task.

"The authorities have always seen them (the special units) as a way to reduce public pressure and blow off steam," Knox said.

While Rangel and the other victims' families maintain faith that their loved ones are still alive, perhaps subjected to forced labor by the drug cartels, Mexico's National Human Rights Commission has received information on 15,921 unidentified bodies that have passed through morgues in Mexico, some of which could belong to the missing.

A recent case in Mexico City has highlighted the difficulties surrounded cases of suspected disappearances.

On May 26, 11 young people disappeared from a Mexico City after-hours bar just off the city's main Reforma boulevard, a block and a half from the U.S. Embassy.

The young people were from the rough-and-tumble Tepito neighborhood and their disappearance only came to light after their parents and other Tepito residents held a protest that blocked a major road. Media reports later said that the fathers of two of the missing young men were suspected former Tepito crime bosses currently doing time in prison.

A witness who apparently escaped from the abduction said the young people were taken away by gunmen in masks after partying through the night at the bar. But Mexico City's prosecutor's office has said that surveillance video reviewed so far by police hasn't shown a mass abduction.

Now the witness can no longer be found, nor can the bar's owner or any of the staff who were working that night.

The families have put up missing-person posters with photos of their loved ones throughout the area, and say that almost 10 days later they still have not come home.

Wednesday 5 June 2013

http://www.islandpacket.com/2013/06/04/2528632/amnesty-intl-mexico-disappearances.html

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India: Unclaimed bodies pile up at OGH mortuary


Delays in shifting unclaimed bodies from the Osmania General Hospital (OGH) mortuary have been cause for discomfort not only for hospital staff but also patients and attendants visiting the hospital.

As the bodies lie unclaimed, the stench from the morgue begins to spread, and at times reaches the nearby blocks of the hospital. Visitors and patients apart, even hospital staff can be seen holding their noses to escape the stench.

On Friday, more than 30 unclaimed bodies piled up at the morgue, awaiting clearance from authorities.

The morgue has a single room with freezer facilities, which can accommodate only 32 bodies at a time. Bodies are preserved here pending identification, while the old ones are shifted to an adjacent room that is devoid of proper facilities.

Of the 10 to 15 bodies that come in daily, of which three to four are of unknown persons. While identified bodies are handed over to the relatives after the autopsy, unclaimed ones are kept at the mortuary until the GHMC facilitates a cremation.

Mortuary authorities intimate the Afzalgunj police station of unclaimed bodies and after receiving a go-ahead from the police, they write to the GHMC, who then shift the bodies for cremation or assign the job to an NGO.

Mortuary officials say the list of bodies is handed over to the GHMC at regular intervals but there are delays in clearing the bodies. As a result, they pile up at the mortuary, leading to unhygienic conditions.

In mid-May, authorities lifted about 120 bodies in one go and in the month of March, 63 bodies were moved out at once. The prescribed period for preserving unclaimed bodies is about 72 hours but in the last few months, bodies were around lying for more than two months, the staff said.

Most bodies come to the mortuary are already in a bad state and after lying here for days at a stretch, one can imagine the conditions, they added.

When contacted Y. Venkata Ramana, GHMC Circle IV, Assistant Medical and Health Officer, said he was not aware of any delays. “I will look into the matter,” he said.

Wednesday 5 June 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/unclaimed-bodies-pile-up-at-ogh-mortuary/article4782217.ece

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67 fire victims identified in China's Jilin


Sixty-seven bodies from a deadly fire accident in northeast China's Jilin province have been identified, according to local authorities.

Additionally, The Beijing Times newspaper reports on Wednesday that DNA samples have been taken from the remaining unidentified victims in order to be matched with that of their relatives.

The fatal fire, which broke out on Monday morning at a poultry processing workshop owned by the Jilin Baoyuanfeng Poultry Company, has killed 120 people.

Seventy-seven wounded people are being treated in local hospitals, including seven who are in critical condition.

Meanwhile, China's judicial officials are investigating whether dereliction of duty played a role in the accident.

Wednesday 5 June 2013

http://english.cri.cn/6909/2013/06/05/191s768597.htm

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