Uttarakhand missing declared dead

Two and a half months after the worst-ever deluge in Uttarakhand, thousands of people who went missing have now beeen officially declared dead. So far, they were only feared to have died since their bodies were untraced despite rescue operations.

The Uttarakhand government on Monday decided to officially declare thousands of missing persons dead, Additional Secretary and Director Information Meenakshi Sundaram told Deccan Herald on Tuesday.

Sundaram said the process to issue death certificates would begin after necessary documents were provided by the next of kin of the deceased. The death certificates would only be issued for people whose names have been included in the missing persons list. “The Centre has accorded special permission for this,” Sundaram added.

Less than 600 bodies have been recovered, but there are an estimated 6,054 people who have died in the floods. Of these, 5,474 are untraceable. The decision state’s comes after rounds of deliberations with the Centre.

The decision was circulated by the state government only after the Centre accorded its approval to declare the missing persons as dead.

The decision paves way for award of compensation announced by the Centre and various state governments. It also attempts to clears all legal hurdles on issues relating to inheritance of movable and immovable property by legal heirs even in cases where the person died intestate.

Life insurance claims, too, can only be addressed provided there are valid death certificates. Sources said a person missing under “normal” circumstances could only be declared dead after a mandatory period of seven years.

However, in this case, the permission was granted as a special case given the magnitude of the tragedy. The exception to the rule was also made in the case of Tamil Nadu when scores of people lost their lives in the tsunami.

Until recently, the Uttarakhand government had been maintaining that these untraced people could only be “feared as dead” since the bodies had not been recovered.

In the absence of a death certificate, it was not possible to provide the Centre’s compensation of Rs 3 lakh to the next of kin of the deceased. The number of dead could rise once all the debris is cleared in Kedarnath, which was the epicentre of the disaster.

Tuesday 3 September 2013

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/355178/uttarakhand-missing-declared-dead.html

Flood death toll in State of Bihar rises to 160

Around 5.5 million people have been affected due to floods in 20 districts of Bihar, with the death toll going up to 160, official figures showed.

With the flood situation remaining critical, thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes and struggle for survival under the open skies with inadequate relief at hand, officials said.

"After heavy rains lashed several part of the state Monday, the flood situation worsened and more areas have been inundated," said an official of the state disaster management department.

With all major rivers, including the Ganga, Kosi, Gandak, Budhi Gandak, Sone and Bagmati, flowing above the danger mark, there is a threat of more villages being inundated.

State Water Resources Development Minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary, however, said all river embankments were safe and there was no need to panic.

Vipin Kumar Rai, officer on special duty at the disaster management department, said the authorities have set up relief camps for flood-affected people in most areas.

Till date, 2.9 lakh quintals of foodgrain have been distributed among the flood victims. Besides, 50,550 polythene sheets have been distributed and 2,799 boats pressed into service for ferrying the affected people from one place to another, he said.

Floodwaters have already entered hundreds of villages and people forced to flee their homes, reviving fears of a repetition of the 2008 devastation.

In 2008, over three million people were rendered homeless in the state when the Kosi river breached its bank upstream in Nepal and changed course. It was said to be the worst floods in the state in the last 50 years.

The rising Ganga recently broke a decades-old record as it wreaked havoc in nearly a dozen districts, including Patna, Saran, Bhojpur, Bhagalpur, Buxar, Katihar, Vaishali and Begusarai.

"Water entered these villages after the levels rose in all the major rivers. Most of the flood victims have taken shelter on high roads, embankments, schools and government buildings and in makeshift tents," said another official of the department.

Officials said standing crops, including bananas, worth crores of rupees have been destroyed and road communication at several places has snapped.

"Rising rivers have badly hit paddy cultivation and destroyed standing banana and maize crops in Vaishali, Khagaria, Bhagalpur and other districts," he said.

Tuesday 3 September 2019

http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Patna/Over-five-million-hit-in-Bihar-floods-toll-160/Article1-1116836.aspx

Unhealed from Peru's bloody conflict are legion a decade after truth commission's report

For almost a quarter century, they have scoured the mountains of Peru's poorest region in search of the son hauled away by soldiers in the middle of the night. During their futile search, the couple found 70 clandestine burial sites and unearthed three dozen bodies.

After Javier was taken along with two school chums, they wrote the local military commander, who denied knowing anything. They wrote the Roman Catholic Church, the Congress and three successive presidents. But none answered Alejandro Crispin and his wife, Alicia.

"How is it possible that no one is in jail for 'disappearing' one's child?" asked Crispin, who at 69 is equal parts exhausted, bewildered and indignant. "How is it possible that the killers of innocents remain free?"

The couple's odyssey lays bare Peru's failure to address the unhealed wounds of thousands of families, most of them poor, Quechua-speaking peasants, who were the principal victims of the country's 1980-2000 conflict between Maoist Shining Path guerrillas and the government.

About 70,000 people died, just over half slain by rebels and over a third by security forces, according to estimates by a Truth and Reconciliation Commission of respected academics.

But 10 years after the commission issued its recommendations, few have been heeded: No state agency exists dedicated to finding and cataloging the bodies of the estimated 15,000 people forcibly disappeared in the conflict. Researchers blame most of the disappearances on security forces.

Few human rights abusers have been prosecuted. And fewer than two in five of the 78,000 relatives of people killed who applied for reparations received them, getting less than $4,000 each.

"As a nation, (Peru) has failed miserably to exhibit even the most basic empathy for those fellow citizens," said Eduardo Gonzalez, director of the Truth and Memory program at the International Center for Transitional Justice, a New York-based non-profit that helps war-wracked countries recover.

Argentina and Chile have advanced far further in punishing perpetrators of war crimes, and even Colombia, which is still at war, has done more to provide reparations, he said.

Then-President Alejandro Toledo apologized to all victims of political violence when the commission released its report in 2003. But no other public or social institution has acknowledged errors, said the man who led the commission, former Catholic University president Salomon Lerner.

"It is a task still to be done," he told The Associated Press.

On the anniversary of the report's release, Aug. 28, hundreds marched in Lima in commemoration of the conflict's victims. Absent and silent were the country's political and military leaders.

To date, the bodies of 2,478 of the disappeared have been recovered.

Javier Crispin's is not among them.

He was 18 when soldiers stormed into the house in Huancavelica where he and two friends were working on a class report and hauled them away — presumably suspecting they were rebels, his father said. The city lies in Peru's poorest state and borders Ayacucho, where the insurgency was born and where more than 40 per cent of deaths and disappearances occurred.

Several dozen Huancavelica residents said soldiers would stop youths on the street, order them to empty their backpacks to look for weapons — and take some away.

"The soldiers would pass through the streets shouting, 'Damn you, you sons of bitches, we can do whatever we want with you,'" said Giovana Cueva, whose brother Alfredo Ayuque was seized with Javier.

Unlike Guatemala, which received U.N. assistance to cope with its violent recent past, Peru has done little to catalogue abuses and identify the dead.

Investigators from the prosecutor's office, aided by the International Committee of the Red Cross, were often spurred into action by Alejandro Crispin's findings.

"All these years I've had to dip into my own pocket to pay for information so I could find the graves, because no one helps," said the retired topographer, who spent all the $10,000 he had saved for the brick home he never built.

The truth commission was able to document only 24,692 deaths — 44 per cent by state security agents and 37 per cent by the Shining Path, with the other killers undetermined. A relatively low percentage of overall deaths in the conflict occurred in actual combat, leading to complaints by rights activists of meagre prosecutions of war criminals.

Only 68 state security agents have been convicted of war crimes, while 134 have been acquitted, mostly soldiers, said Jo-Marie Burt, a George Mason University political scientist who studies the conflict.

Judges have not accepted that "in Peru there were systematic violations of human rights," she said. "Instead, in recent years they argue that there were only 'excesses,' and with those arguments they have absolved those who gave the orders."

Huancavelica's human rights prosecutor, Juan Borja, said Defence Ministry officials have blocked all attempts to locate and prosecute those responsible for Javier Crispin's disappearance.

"I've made 80 inquiries ... for this and other cases and their answer is that they don't have the information," Borja said as he and a forensic archaeologist dug with pickaxes and shovels at a clandestine gravesite outside Huancavelica to which Alejandro Crispin led them.

The Defence Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Shining Path instigated the bloodletting and its leaders and more than 600 other insurgents were convicted of terrorism and jailed, but many mid-level rebel commanders guilty of war crimes evaded justice.

People such as Nicanor Torres have tried, mostly in vain, to set that straight.

The 52-year-old Lima tailor is obsessed with avenging the 1984 killings of his parents and two brothers by rebels in a remote part of Ayacucho state.

His sister Alejandrina, who was 4 at the time, hid under a neighbour's skirts as rebels cut her parents' throats in their home in the hamlet of Chaca, and he travelled from Lima to rescue her.

Torres said he knows who had his relatives killed: A rebel commander who robbed them of 1,000 sheep, a hundred head of cattle and 53 horses.

Torres said he tracked the man down and twice visited his house in Ayacucho's capital, Huamanga, intent on killing him. The first time, a woman answered the door. The second time, a girl. Both said the former Shining Path cadre wasn't home.

Nicanor and Alejandrina Torres returned to Chaca in June for the formal burial of their parents, whose remains had been exhumed a year earlier.

Villagers wept quietly as they carried 21 coffins from the town square, through a eucalyptus grove beside a river where frogs croaked, to its cemetery.

Alejandrina Torres said she was so shocked she didn't cry.

Only when she returned to Lima, in the solitude of her room, did the tears come: "I couldn't sleep for two days."

Tuesday 3 September 2013

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Unhealed+from+Perus+bloody+conflict+legion+decade+after+truth/8861950/story.html

After 60 years, final attempt to identify 32 unknown victims of the 1953 Big Flood in the Netherlands

(Original article in Dutch) Experts from the police and the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) attempt to identify 32 people who perished 60 years ago during the 1953 Big Flood. Mayor Gerard Rabelink of Schouwen-Duiveland has given permission to dig up 32 corpses so that researchers can collect DNA, Rabelink announced on Tuesday morning. The mayor is the one who must grant permission to the police to exhume remains.

Thirty-two unidentfied bodies are buried on Schouwen- Duiveland who have died during the flood. Anyone who is missing a family member after the Flood can donate his or her DNA sample.

The DNA profile will be entered into the DNA database for missing persons at the Dutch Forensic Institute and checked for potential matches. A spokeswoman for the NFI stressed that the DNA profile will be used solely to identify the bodies.

The 32 unknown dead of the flood are buried in various cemeteries on Schouwen - Duivenland and therefore various excavations take place this month in the villages of Serooskerke, Ouwerkerk and Nieuwerkerk. This is done as respectfully as possible with forensic experts present, says Irma Disk, team leader of the National Missing Persons Bureau of the police. " A forensic archaeologist is present to ensure that remains are exhumed correctly as graves may have shifted and coffins decayed throughout the years. We want them be certain."

The research on the burial takes place in a white tent. The researchers suggest taking a piece of femur and molars to collect DNA. At the NFI, the DNA will be extracted and a DNA profile drawn up which will hopefully lead to a match for each victim. Two or 3 family members from the first line will give the greatest chance of success, "says Disk.

It will probably take months before the first results are known.

Tuesday 3 September 2013

http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/21860784/__Doden_alsnog_geidentificeerd__.html

Peru slow in exhuming war's victims

It was Alejandrina Torres' first time back in her native village since Shining Path rebels cut her parents' throats while she hid, a terrified 4-year-old, beneath the skirts of a neighbour.

She joined relatives of other villagers slain by insurgents nearly three decades ago to formally bury the remains of 21 people, including her parents, exhumed from a common grave in the remote region of Ayacucho state that endured some of the worst atrocities of Peru's 1980-2000 conflict.

Both security forces and Maoist-inspired insurgents committed grave human rights violations.

A Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated the conflict claimed nearly 70,000 lives, most of them poor, Quechua-speaking people such as Torres. Some 15,000 of them disappeared. Yet fewer than 3,000 bodies have been exhumed because Peru has lagged in healing the wounds of its war.

The villagers in Chaca wept quietly as they carried white coffins through a eucalyptus grove from the town square to a cemetery.

"I can just see the `senderistas' (rebels) coming down from the hills, shouting in Quechua, `Die, traitorous dogs!'" Torres said as she walked.

Chaca's victims were killed in retaliation for forming a self-defense committee. As weapons they had little more than slingshots and poles with knives tied on.

"A lot of battles without names happened here," said Constantino Urbano.

He recalled watching, hidden on a nearby hillside, as insurgents killed his father and burned down the village's wooden Roman Catholic church. He was 9 at the time.

Chaca is among thousands of communities still waiting for reparations money promised by the state eight years ago. It lacks running water and telephone service, medical attention is precarious and, during the four-month rainy season, it's inaccessible by vehicle because the dirt road becomes mud.

Tuesday 3 September 2013

http://www.theintelligencer.com/article_7e0041dc-33da-5218-9e7e-d7e0f636692f.html

70 years ago this week, Philadelphia's disastrous train accident

It was Monday, Sept. 6, 1943 — the second Labor Day since the U.S. had entered World War II — and the pride of the Pennsylvania Railroad, a sleek train known as the Congressional Limited, was leaving the nation’s capital filled to capacity.

On board were returning holiday weekenders, military personnel on leave and government officials.

A 16-car express train with eight coaches, two dining cars and five Pullmans, it pulled out of Washington, D.C.’s Union Station at 4 p.m. carrying 541 passengers.

If everything went as scheduled, it would arrive at New York City’s Pennsylvania Station at precisely 7:35 traveling the 236 miles between Washington and New York at speeds approaching 100 miles an hour in a then-remarkable time of only three hours and 35 minutes.

Passing through Baltimore, Wilmington and even Philadelphia without stopping, it would roar past Philly’s 30th Street and North Philadelphia stations.

Yet it would be forced to slow down as it approached Frankford Junction on the edge of Kensington just beyond the point where the railroad passed under the Frankford El tracks on Kensington Avenue. There, it would decelerate to 45 miles an hour as it crossed a series of switches.

Beyond Frankford Junction, the train would again be racing along a relatively straight stretch of track through Northeast Philadelphia and into Lower Bucks County. After crossing the Delaware River at Trenton, there would be clear sailing all the way to its first stop — Newark — and, 20 minutes later, it would arrive at Pennsylvania Station.

But on that fated day, the Congressional Limited would never reach its final destination.

Before it had completed its run through Philadelphia, something would go dreadfully wrong.

What no one on that speeding train could know was the journal box — a device that lubricates railroad axles and resembles a hubcap — on one of the cars had burned out.

In 1943, cotton was packed into journal boxes to prevent their lubricating oil from leaking. However, if the oil was eventually depleted, the cotton would burn and the box would freeze up. resulting in tremendous friction against the axle, which would eventually cause that axle to break away.



The first warning came at 6 p.m. as the train passed Front Street just 3/4 of a mile west of Frankford Junction. There, Harold W. McClintock, then of Croydon, an engineer on a switching engine, noticed flames and smoke shooting from a defective journal box on the front wheel of the seventh car.

Recognizing the immediate danger, McClintock shouted to his partner, Andrew Carlin, to telephone ahead to the next signal tower.

Unfortunately, as the message was being received, the train was already bearing down on the tower. Before he had even put down the phone, John Boyer, who was manning the tower, watched in horror as the train began leaving the tracks, literally at his feet.

It was exactly 6:08 p.m.

As the Congressional passed under the Frankford elevated line structure, passengers had begun to notice the cars were jerking and the wheels seemed to be bounding along the rails. Some people were tossed from side to side. Others were thrown onto the floor. Babies were flying from their mothers’ arms and luggage was tumbling from the overhead racks.

Within seconds, the broken axle from the seventh car dropped to the roadbed, and the engine and the first six cars broke away from the rest of the train. The seventh car then vaulted into the air on the broken axle, flinging itself across the adjoining set of tracks and smashing against a huge steel tower that held the power lines and signal lights.

The pole cut through the length of the car like a can opener, splitting the top half from the bottom half, and spilling the passengers along the right of way. The eighth car hit the tower, was smashed around it and overturned with its end on top of the seventh car.

The ninth and 10th cars jackknifed and spread across two adjoining tracks. Behind them, four more cars left the tracks, but remained upright, and more than 1,500 feet of three separate tracks were torn apart.

The injured and dying lay everywhere. Many were trapped inside by the crushed seats and collapsed metal.

Hearing the tremendous noise and witnessing the electrical sparks from the falling high-voltage lines, many of the neighborhood residents rushed from their homes and up the steep embankment to the scene of the wreck.

Some were frozen in place by the horrible sights they witnessed and by the screams of the injured and dying. Others stayed to assist the injured or returned to their homes for bedsheets and linens that were quickly used as dressings. Civil defense workers brought stretchers and other medical supplies that had been stockpiled for possible wartime use in air raids.

Private homes on the street that ran parallel to the tracks served as temporary aid stations. Passing vehicles, particularly small trucks, were stopped and pressed into service to transport some of the injured to nearby hospitals.

In the first hours following the disaster, rows of sheet-covered bodies lay on the lawn of a nearby hospital before being taken to the city morgue.

As word of the tragedy spread, hundreds of spectators began arriving, hampering the rescue work. Soldiers and sailors were called in, and armed with submachine guns, they surrounded the wreckage, holding back the curious and preventing looting.

Throughout the night, cars on the Frankford El were jammed, as curiosity-seekers rode back and forth gawking out the windows at the unbelievable scene just beneath them.

While 79 people died and another 116 were injured in what would be known as one of the worst train wrecks in American history, fortunately, the Congressional Limited was traveling at only 45 miles an hour when it left the tracks.

It’s difficult to imagine what the casualty toll might have been if the accident had occurred a few minutes earlier or a few minutes later when it would have been moving at a much-higher speed.

Tuesday 3 September 2013

http://www.phillyburbs.com/entertainment/local_entertainment/years-ago-this-week-philly-s-disastrous-train-wreck/article_e5391433-ff75-5bb4-9ceb-5f39822221dc.html?mode=image&photo=0

Ferry sinking death toll at 108; 29 missing

More bodies were brought up by divers from the sunken ferry St. Thomas Aquinas in the last three days, bringing to 108 the total so far of dead in the Aug. 16 collision between the passenger ship and the cargo vessel Sulpicio Express Siete off Talisay City in Cebu, according to the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG).

The divers of the Philippine Coast Guard, Philippine National Police and the Philippine Navy were ordered not to stop their search and rescue mission, which is now being undertaken inside the sunken St. Thomas Aquinas off Cebu,” said Commander Armand Balilo, spokesperson of the Philippine Coast Guard.

Filipino fishermen could not go fishing because the oil spill of the sunken passenger ferry has littered the mangroves of five towns in Cordova. “That’s why the fishermen have been assisting government divers in the search and rescue operation,” said Balilo.

The bodies that the divers found over the weekend were brought to Talisay, for identification, said Balilo.

Relatives of the missing passengers have exerted pressure for the retrieval of bodies as they continued holding vigil for more than two weeks at the office of 2Go Travel which operates St. Thomas Aquinas.

Company owners and government officials have not stopped giving assurances that all the missing would be accounted for.

Filipinos want to honour their dead with proper burial ceremonies.

Balilo said that Rear Adm. Rodolfo Isorena, the PCG chief, “has directed the teams of divers to check all sections of the St. Thomas Aquinas.”

“He [Isorena] assured the families of the missing passengers and crew members of the ill-fated ferry that the command was doing its best to account for them,” Balilo told the Inquirer.

The divers were earlier reported to have searched up to 60 percent of the ferry and were set to look in the tourist cabins.

The work of the divers has become harder with the increasing number of the dead and the missing. Earlier reports said that fatalities could reach 120, but this was adjusted to 137.

As of late Monday, the number of missing ferry passengers and crew stood at 29. The Coast Guard placed the number of rescued passengers and crew at 629 and 104, respectively.

According to Balilo, the PCG station in Cebu had made revisions to the number of casualties “based on body parts recovered, as well as validations by 2GO Travel (operator of the St. Thomas Aquinas), the Cebu Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, and representatives of the Department of Health.”

Most commuters prefer using passenger ferries when travelling across the nation. Lax implementation of regulatory rules often results in sea mishaps especially during the rainy season.

More than 20 typhoons devastate the Philippines during this period, which starts in June.

Tuesday 3 August 2013

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/480165/ferry-sinking-death-toll-at-108-29-missing

http://gulfnews.com/news/world/philippines/philippines-ferry-disaster-divers-search-for-32-bodies-from-sunken-ferry-1.1226440

Recovery team to enter Pike River mine in search of bodies three years after explosions

The decision is a victory for grieving families of the victims who have campaigned untiringly, often in what seemed the face of official intransigence, since the disaster for the return of their loved ones.

After the relatives had been told of the re-entry plan at a meeting in the South Island town of Greymouth on Tuesday morning, Simon Bridges, the Energy and Resources Minister, announced that NZ$7.2 million (£3.6 million) had been set aside for the attempt.

Under the plan, the mine will be made safe for experts to walk as far as a rockfall in the mile-and-a-half long entry tunnel. The rockfall was caused by the explosions.

"Our criteria are that any re-entry into the tunnel up to the rockfall is safe, technically feasible and financially credible," Mr Bridges said.

"This is a highly complex and technical operation and it will be carefully managed in stages, with a risk assessment undertaken at each stage."

If successful, a further plan could be developed to re-enter the main mine workings beyond the rockfall, where most, if not all, of the men's bodies are believed to be entombed.

"The Government cannot comment or speculate about re-entering the main mine until the tunnel re-entry has been successfully achieved," Mr Bridges said.

Bernie Monk, who lost his son Michael, 23, and has passionately articulated the anguish and frustration of the bereaved since the disaster, greeted the announcement, saying: "Today is a big day for the families."

Although he thought his son was unlikely to be in the tunnel that will be opened, he said: "I may never get my son back, but other families might get their men."

The work is due to begin in October and Laurie Drew, who lost his son Zen in the explosion, said he liked to think he could have him back for Christmas.

Damien O'Connor, the local MP, said: "It's a huge technical challenge, but one step at a time, that's all the families have asked for.

"It has been a long time, it's been an agonising wait."

The 29 miners died after four explosions ripped through the coal mine over several days from November 19, 2010.

Britons Malcolm Campbell, 25, from St Andrew's in Fife, and Peter Rodger, 40, from Perthshire, were among those killed.

Mr Campbell was due to marry his Kiwi fiancee just a month later, and Mr Rodger lived in Greymouth with his girlfriend.

The youngest victim, Joseph Dunbar, who was just 17, was on his first day at work.

Tuesday 3 September 2013

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/newzealand/10282513/Recovery-team-to-enter-Pike-River-mine-in-search-of-bodies-three-years-after-explosions.html