Meet Prakash, man who conducts last rites of unclaimed bodies with respect

The long and short story when a person dies is that he or she is given a proper last rite. But imagine the grief of the family which could not find or identify the bodies of the beloved ones who had died.

Their dilemma is while unable to accept the on the loss, they have an added emotional stress on whether the last rite must have taken place — according to their traditional practices or not — in the event that the body is disposed of as unidentified.

Enter 64-year-old legal consultant Prakash Gidwani — the man who collects unclaimed bodies and ensures that they get a decent funeral irrespective of the religion the dead person might have followed.

Gidwani, a member of the disaster managment cell of BMC, collects the unclaimed bodies from various hospitals in Mumbai.

He has been doing this yeoman service for since the last 34 years. Gidwani said he has performed funerals of over 1,000 bodies so far.

With the help of his associates, Gidwani also pulls out bodies — mostly decomposed — found near the sea shore and informs the local police station as well as the fire brigade.

“I have been doing this social work since 1980. We recover bodies that generally get washed away in sea. Most of such bodies are highly decomposed. After following certain legal procedures, like registration of accidental death case at the police station concerned, we wait till establishment of his/her identity. The unclaimed bodies are generally kept at mortuaries for 15 days. Meantime, we try to find out if any missing complaint has been registered in any police station. Eventually, when we don’t get any lead to establish its identity we conduct its funeral with due respect,” said Gidwani.

He said the BMC provides only 300 kg bundle of firewood for funeral of a body. Gidwani has though some disillusionment in his work. He said mortuary vans overcharged while ferrying decomposed bodies to hospital.

“They demand Rs. 12,000 to take a decomposed body found near the sea shore because of its stench. So we have arranged one vehicle for the purpose,” he said.

Further, the duty officer of a police station gets Rs. 1,500 to conduct the final rites of an unclaimed body. But the procedure to get Rs. 1,500 reimbursed is so lengthy that most of the officers contact Gidwani to shrug off their responsibilities.

Nonetheless, Versova-resident Gidwani feels peace and blissful in cremating the unclaimed bodies with dignity.

“In this fast pace world where modernisation is at the centre, most families have become nuclear and senior citizen parents feel neglected. Such parents leave home in distress either to commit suicide or search shelter in old-age homes. We too take care of such parents by providing them better medical assistance before reuniting them with their children,” Gidwani said.

Gidwani further said to show respect to victims of the 26/11 Mumbai blast, he provided shrouds (kafan) to wrap the bodies before their funeral.

27 August 2017

http://www.freepressjournal.in/mumbai/meet-prakash-man-who-conducts-last-rites-of-unclaimed-bodies-with-respect/1127589

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Sierra Leone: "Why should it be a crime to volunteer on the Safe and Dignified Burial Team?"

Before the outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in Sierra Leone, it was a taboo in most parts of the country for young people, especially those of child bearing age, to witness the washing and preparation of corpses for burial. In line with tradition, women prepared female corpses for burial and men would prepare male bodies. However, as the death toll from Ebola escalated and the majority of burial teams were composed of only men, such a provision could not be made for women.

Seeking to preserve the dignity of their deceased loved ones, some families objected to the all-male teams attending to a female corpse. Or, burial teams would arrive in a community to find that the deceased had already been washed and dressed. Such interaction with a potentially contagious body will have resulted in new chains of transmission. To counter this, the Sierra Leone Red Cross Society specifically recruited women to join its Safe and Dignified Burial teams. There are now more than 30 female volunteers embedded into these teams across the country.

Despite their heroic contributions, these courageous women, along with their male counterparts, have frequently been ostracized and stigmatized by their communities, and even loved ones.

Mariatu Kargbo shares her experiences as a member of the Sierra Leone Red Cross Society's Safe and Dignified Burial team, and talks about what motivates her to overcome these social challenges.

Mariatu Kargbo, 38, is married with five children. She became the second female volunteer for the Sierra Leone Red Cross Society's Safe and Dignified Burial (SDB) team serving the Western Rural Area.

"It is a taboo in my tribe for women within child bearing age to witness or wash dead bodies. This often lingers in my mind because I am still within the age of being a child bearer and I want to have another child," says Mariatu.

"It is not easy. Ebola is new in our country, it is contiguous and risky. But if you are self-disciplined and go strictly according to the standard operational procedures, you will never contract it." Mariatu can speak confidently based on her experience of collecting bodies. Sadly this confidence is not shared by her relatives. "All my friends and most of my family members are afraid to come closer to me, they refuse to eat the food I prepare, and some traders in my community don't sell goods to me because I am part of the SDB team." Mariatu poses the question, "Why should it be a crime to be a SDB volunteer?"

Wednesday 8 July 2015

http://allafrica.com/stories/201507070622.html

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Nepal’s religious minorities battle for burial grounds

In a quiet corner in Rajahar, a small town in south-central Nepal, a two-decade old mosque serves not only as a place for prayer but also as one of few spaces unencumbered for the tiny, close-knit Muslim community.

On the adjoining lot, a church with a large compound and a classroom stands testament to the fact that the two religious minority groups in the Hindu majority country enjoy co-existence and interfaith harmony.

But life—or rather, death, to be specific—is harsh for them, beyond the confines of the prayer halls.

The 250-member Muslim community of Rajahar, in the district of Nawalparasi, braces for hostility whenever one among them dies.

“When someone in our community dies, we can’t bury him or her here because we don’t have a graveyard. We have to take the body to a forest in Chitwan [some 15 miles away] for burial. Even there we are faced with hostile locals, who harass us saying we were encroaching upon their land,” Nazamuddin Miya, 37, told Anadolu Agency.

A year ago, a 70-year old Muslim woman died in Rajahar. That afternoon, Miya and 30 other Muslims hired a bus that served as a hearse and drove to a forest in Ram Nagar in the neighboring Chitwan district.

Roughly 80 percent of Nepal’s 26.6 million people call themselves Hindus. Buddhists, the country’s second largest religious group, make up 9 percent of the population.

Nepal became a secular country after the end of Hindu monarchy in 2008, raising hopes of equal rights and representation for a melange of minority groups including Muslims, who make up roughly 4.4 percent, over a million of the population.

After the end of the decade-long Maoist insurgency in 2006, Nepal’s leaders pledged to deliver a democratic, inclusive constitution that addressed the grievances of marginalized communities, including Muslims and Christians.

Over the years, Nepali Muslims took part in protests demanding representation in the state structure, joining dozens of ethnic and regional groups agitating in the country’s eastern hills and Tarai plains.

But Muslim leaders say the state has continued to be discriminatory, denying them even basic rights to burial sites.

“A state doesn’t have a religion, but its citizens can follow any religion. Every religious community should be able to follow its rituals and practices. But the state has treated us like third-class citizens,” Roshan Kharel, a local Muslim leader, told Anadolu Agency.

“If the state allows us to be born as Muslim, it must also allow us to die as Muslim. And that’s when the issue of burial grounds becomes really significant for us. We have been struggling for it for several years but to no avail,” said Kharel, a former Hindu who converted to Islam during a stint as a migrant worker in Qatar.

The Muslims of Rajahar are not the only community that feels threatened and discriminated.

In Hetauda, a town of Makwanpur district, about 60 miles east of Rajahar, Christians face a similar ordeal.

“We don’t have any designated space for burial. We have buried our dead on a plot that belongs to a Hindu temple but we often face resistance from locals and temple authorities,” said Prashant Dev, a local Christian leader and publisher of a monthly Christian newspaper.

He said the Christian members of Makwanpur district, home to 22,000 Christians, have often fought for the designation of a burial ground.

“We have organized protests demanding a burial ground; I have led several delegations to the local administrator and forest office, but nothing has come out of it,” Dev told Anadolu Agency.

With the local authorities turning a deaf ear, he said, his community members were forced to buy land for a graveyard or donate to some of the 300 churches in the district to secure the burial sites.

When Nepal was hit by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake in April, nearly 10 percent of fatalities were Christians, who were in the middle of a weekly congregation.

Christians in Nepal congregate on Saturday – the day of the quake – taking advantage of the country's single-day weekend, said C. B. Gahatraj, a pastor and general secretary of the National Federation of Christians, a 5,700-member organization.

“Unfortunately, the districts that were hardest hit—Gorkha, Dhading, Sindhupalchok, Nuwakot and Kavre—are also places where most Nepali Christians live. That morning, they had gathered for prayers. So the congregants were killed in the earthquake,” he said, adding that the quake destroyed 93 churches and damaged 500 more in central and eastern Nepal.

Out of a total 8,844 victims of the quake, 778 were Christians, with most buried while praying in two neighborhoods of the capital Kathmandu and in several hamlets of the badly-hit Sindhupalchok district. While many agree on the numbers of the dead, there is no consensus on the nationwide population of Christians in Nepal. The national census puts the figure at 300,000 while Christian leaders claim there are 2.5 million.

“After the earthquake, lack of space for burial in Kathmandu forced us to move the bodies to the districts where they came from. We had been demanding burial grounds even the day before the earthquake,” Gahatraj told Anadolu Agency.

The minority religious group has fought a long and hard battle for burial grounds.

In early 2011, the issue of Christian cemeteries came to the fore after the Pashupati Area Development Trust, an autonomous body that oversees the country’s oldest Hindu temple in Kathmandu, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, said it would no longer allow non-Hindus to use the Shleshmantak forest for burials.

While dozens of bodies are cremated everyday on the banks of the Bagmati River in the temple premises, Christians secretly buried their dead in the nearby forest.

A prolonged legal battle and hunger strikes ensued. After a 40-day relay hunger strike in May 2011, the government agreed to meet the Christian community’s demands for burial grounds and formed a high level committee to look into the issue.

A year later, with the committee dragging its feet and the government reluctant to provide space for a cemetery, the Christian community resumed the public protests.

“Despite our protests and after several pledges, the government has failed to address our grievances. The state simply is not paying any attention to our plight,” Gahatraj said.

Aside from the state, the majoritarian Hindu community has also grown intolerant of the minority religious groups’ rights.

Gahatraj and Dev both cited incidents in which they were not allowed to bury their dead on riverbanks, with local people intent on denying them last rites in accordance with Christian rituals.

When a family buried the dead body of a 68-year-old Christian man on their own land, locals protested by pulling the body out and leaving it on the family’s courtyard, Gahatraj said, recalling the 2013 incident in the district of Kavre, in central Nepal.

“Then, we buried him on the banks of a nearby river. Even then, his body was unearthed,” he said.

Their attempt to give the dead man a modicum of burial was foiled again after they buried the body at a forest in Kavre district.

“It had already been several days since his death and the body began to decompose,” Gahatraj recalled.

He and the dead man’s family then hired a pick-up truck and drove several hours, first to Kathmandu and then further west.

When they were about to bury the body on the banks of the Trishuli River, a group of locals, having noticed the activities, arrived on the riverbank amid a glow of torchlight in the night.

“We were allowed to bury the body only after handing 5,000 rupees ($50) to them,” he said.

Tuesday 30 June 2015

http://www.aa.com.tr/en/culture-and-art/546974--nepal-s-religious-minorities-battle-for-burial-grounds

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Fatal heatwave: Karachi running out of space for the dead

A stench surrounds the Edhi morgue. Bodies, some uncovered, others in a white shroud, lie scattered on the floor. Among them is a man with a white beard and shabby brown clothes, a fly sitting on his chest. Ambulances, parked outside, are also housing the dead until there is space available for them inside the morgue.

The fatal heatwave is making it difficult for the morgues to function, and the largest one in the city – the Edhi morgue at Sohrab Goth – is running out of space. By the scorching Tuesday afternoon, the morgue that has a capacity of 200 bodies had over 250 lying in and around it. Every few minutes, ambulances arrive at the entrance, bringing with them more deceased, mostly victims of the deadly heatwave.

In the last four days, more than 500 bodies were brought to this morgue, says Ghulam Hussain, one of the officials. “It is becoming difficult but we are trying to manage.”

Out on the streets

Umair Syed, an ambulance driver at the Edhi Foundation, parks his vehicle and hurries to shift the body into the cramped morgue. “Make space, make space,” he screams. He has brought a rickshaw driver from Basheer Chowk, who had even poured water over himself to beat the heat but could not make it. “He splashed water on himself but that didn’t help him against the heat. People are dying on the streets,” laments Syed.

Since the heatwave gripped Karachi, Syed has driven 15 bodies from hospitals, homes and outdoors to the morgue. On Tuesday alone, he brought four of them. The Baldia factory incident was the only other time that Syed has seen the morgue so full. He adds that he has never witnessed so many deaths due to the hot weather. “I am picking up bodies with swollen faces.”

Standing next to him, another driver, Afaq Ahmed, has brought a man who died in front of his eyes. The man was travelling on the roof of a W-11 bus when he started shaking and trembling violently. Ahmed had rushed him to the Civil Hospital, Karachi. “He died in front of me.”

The morgues, from the largest run by the Edhi Welfare Organisation at Sohrab Goth to smaller ones run by other charity organisations, such as the Khidmat-e-Khalq Foundation, Chhipa, Al-Khidmat and Thanvi Trust, are now out of capacity. There is no place for the dead. Meanwhile, these welfare organisations, who alone bear the mantle of running ambulance services in the country’s largest metropolis, are reeling under the pressure as the number of victims rises with each passing hour.

Families

A man who had come for the ghusl of his sister-in-law, Kishwar Aftab, said that the K-Electric was also to be blamed for the deaths. “People don’t have electricity in their homes. We didn’t have power for many hours in Moosa Colony. My sister-in-law had a high fever and she died.”

The smell emanating from the bodies made him and others cover their nose with their hands or clothes. To stay away from the blistering sun, people tried to huddle under the small shade. Fareed, a shopkeeper, said he had been called from his shop to be given the unfortunate news that his wife had died. She was fasting and had died because of the heat, he said with teary eyes.

Bodies being buried

To accommodate more bodies, the Edhi foundation is now burying the unidentified bodies within a day. They have buried 50 bodies in their graveyard so far.

The graveyards, too, are overbooked. The grave-diggers are taking full advantage of the opportunity and demanding double the standard rates. “Each grave is being sold for at least double the money,” said Shahzad, whose friend died in Gulshan-e-Maymar. “You are lucky for not being refused a grave at this time.”

Wednesday 24 June 2015

http://tribune.com.pk/story/908627/fatal-heatwave-karachi-running-out-of-space-for-the-dead/

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China: Morticians volunteer for somber task of preparing the bodies of the 434 Eastern Star victims

More than 100 morticians have gathered in Jianli county, Hubei province, to complete the somber task of preparing the bodies of the 434 Eastern Star victims for cremation or return to their families.

Zhang Wei, who manages a funeral parlor in Hankou and arrived with 15 morticians, said they would provide special care.

"It is the mortician's job to let every deceased depart with dignity," said Zhang, who has 30 years of experience.

"I exhorted every co-worker to move and clean the bodies with extra care. I asked all of them to put their heart and soul into every procedure in their work."

The cruise ship with 456 people aboard capsized in stormy weather on the Yangtze River on June 1 in the country's worst shipping disaster in 70 years. Only 14 people survived and eight remain missing.

Experienced personnel from several cities－including Tianjin, Guangzhou and Wuhan－gathered in Jianli to ensure that the remains are handled with dignity and respect.

Chen Pin, a mortician from Wuhan who volunteered to help, said she and four other colleagues were extremely saddened when they cleaned the body of a 3-year-old girl, the youngest victim of the disaster.

"I burst into tears when I dealt with the body. When I placed the girl on a workbench, I could hardly control the shaking of my hands. I felt truly sorry for the victims, and most of them were elderly people who are supposed to have had a nice trip," Chen said.

"It's hot in Jianli, and the job is not easy," she added. "We usually started work at 5 am and worked until 10 pm. It took two or three hours to prepare each body. On a couple of nights, we worked till midnight."

DNA samples from the bodies have been collected and more than 100 victims had been identified as of Tuesday morning.

Thursday 11 June 2015

http://www.ecns.cn/2015/06-11/168842.shtml

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Ghana: Bodies of Goil fire were not handled with dignity says former health chief

A former Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa has expressed disgust at the way the bodies of those who died in the fire at the Goil fuel station at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle were transported to the morgue.

He was of the view that a similar situation in other countries, especially in more developed countries, would have seen the bodies being wrapped in body bags.

“Anywhere else, all the bodies would have been put in body bags and the body bags would have been appropriately transported to the morgue.”

After last Wednesday’s floods and fire outbreak at the Goil Fuel Station, there were pictures and video footages of the dead bodies being put into the bucket of trucks and being transported to the morgues without any covering.

Prof. Badu Akosa told Citi News, the manner in which the bodies were handled was unprofessional and must not be repeated under any circumstances.

He explained that he was “very distressed the way their bodies were just hurled into the bucket of the pick-ups.”

According to him, it did not “in any way dignify the human beings who had lost their lives under such tragic circumstances. I think as a country, we can do better than that.”

Prof. Akosa pointed out that because the incident was a national catastrophe, “the first thing I would have thought that the morgues will do will be that if they do not have a cold room, they will embalm the bodies.”

“This is almost like a certificate of urgency so what you need to do is to preserve each body in as near the state in which it was brought to the morgue as possible even before relations are brought in to identify the bodies.”

He noted that the families of the victims are already apprehensive while getting into the morgue to identify their relatives “so if you expose more than one body to most people, they will not be actually looking at the body they have come to identify.”

“In most cases, you present the bodies in a manner that they can go from body to body to be able to identify.”

Wednesday 10 June 2015

http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=361785

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Wooden crosses in the Donetsk steppe: volunteers search for bodies of victims

In the midst of the Donetsk steppe on the mountain stands a wooden cross. Is similar, only much more put on the roads of Ukraine As amulets. On the cross hangs a soldier helmet plywood plate below the faded marker inscription: "Here lie four Ukrainian warriors, which finished it off, then set fire to their And dumped near the road. Buried fifteen. 09. 2014 ".

"Here the locals buried the soldiers of the Ukrainian army. Like the river found them, close to the road, after the battle, " says Victor Fly, the Deputy head of the Union of Afghanistan veterans of Lugansk region.

This organization together with the people's militia LNR AND Ukrainian volunteers of the humanitarian mission "Black Tulip" are engaged in the search, exhumation And transfer of the Kiev bodies of soldiers of the armed forces. Watching all the Commissioners of the OSCE.

"Here are four lies below another. Believe me, this is only a small proportion of all burials, which we send data. We have a lot of bodies are Not even Buried. Parts are collected in the fields, in the debaltseve area, for example", says Victor.

And this cross, And a helmet, And ubiquitous grasshoppers, And all This bathed in afternoon sun Prairie, As if merged. The peace And quiet." As if there is war, " I freeze.

"Don't relax - and chuckled low rebel in a dark green camouflage - you see at the bottom of the river?(Five hundred meters from us flows the Seversky Donets river). It is already the Ukrainian district, snipers, probably in the bushes sat down, holding us at gunpoint ".

"Oh, don't bother with us W OSCE! And volunteers over theirs. Won't shoot.

Tuesday 9 June 2015

http://news.rin.ru/eng/news///113649/

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Nepal: Retrieving the remains of Jewish victims for burial

With the body of 22-year-old hiker Or Asraf in the airport en route to Israel, Rabbi Chezky Lifshitz, co-director of Chabad of Nepal, says the grisly work of searching for Jewish remains continues in the wake of the April 25 earthquake that crippled the South Asian nation. “Jewish families whose loved ones are missing have turned to us for help locating the bodies of their children, sisters, brothers,” explains Lifshitz, “and we are doing all we can to locate those bodies as soon as possible and get them to a Jewish burial. We call it chesed shel emet, the true altruistic kindness, because the recipients can never repay us for it.” Jewish law places a premium on bodies being buried as soon as possible after the moment of passing. In Nepal, there is an added urgency, as Hindus routinely cremate their dead, which is forbidden by halachah (Jewish law). In these chaotic times, there is a real chance of local officials simply burning remains before anyone can stop them. RELATED Related News Stories For Israeli Soldiers and Rescue Teams in Nepal, a Semblance of Home Comforting the Friends and Family of Deceased Israeli Hiker Chabad Centers Chabad House of Kathmandu Knowledge Base Kathmandu, Nepal(15) More from Chabad.org Hope in Katmandu Israeli President Rivlin Hosting Lifshitz Kids from Nepal
The work is further complicated because most countries do not have data on the religious affiliation of their citizens—let alone tourists—so Jews in need of burial are hard to locate among thousands of unidentified remains are scattered throughout the country.

Lifshitz has been flying via helicopter all over the country in search of both the living, who may still be stranded in far-flung places, and the dead, so their remains will be handled properly.

So far, he and his fellow rescuer, British-born Yehuda Rose, have brought hundreds of survivors back to safety at the Chabad House in Kathmandu, including a Nepali man who lost his entire family and all his possessions in the quake.

British-born Yehuda Rose, left, flew to Nepal after the earthquake and has worked with Rabbi Lifshitz to bring hundreds of survivors back to safety at the Chabad House in Kathmandu, including this Nepali man, who lost his entire family and all his possessions in the quake.

The rabbi sadly has some experience in locating and transporting tourists who have lost their lives in the often treacherous mountain treks. Notably, in the fall of 2013, he brought the body of Marina Muchnik—whose bus had plunged into a ravine—back to her family in Melbourne, Australia.

Earlier that same summer, George Abboudi, a 22-year-old Jewish man from Leeds, England, went missing. The Lifshitzes led a massive search effort only to discover that he had fallen into a river and died, and had been cremated by local villagers.

While the rabbi spends his days and nights choppering around the country, his wife, Chani, and a staff of volunteers continue to run extensive relief efforts, bringing meals to a refugee camp of some 3,000 Nepalis on a daily basis. Simultaneously, they serve as a home base for the Israeli rescue and medical teams that have come to the aid of the beleaguered nation.

Said the rabbi: “I wish what we offer could heal the wounded and the suffering … if not their bodies, then at least their souls.”

Tuesday 5 May 2015

http://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/2938299/jewish/Next-Task-in-Nepal-Retrieving-the-Remains-of-Jews-for-Burial.htm

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You don't actually need to bury the dead immediately after a natural disaster

It's a persistent myth that the bodies of the dead after a natural disaster are a big health risk. Sadly, most of the people who die in disasters such as earthquakes or floods are healthy. That means their bodies aren't likely to hold disease that can spread to survivors. (The situation is different for disasters such as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, during which dead bodies were a major transmitter of illness.)

Public health organizations have been trying for the last decade to get the message across that it's OK to leave bodies unburied after natural disasters, to give people time to identify their deceased loved ones, but as recently as 2013, officials in the Philippines buried people in mass graves following a typhoon there. There are many better ways to prevent disease outbreaks after natural disasters.

In fact, it may actually be better for public health to go about burials more slowly, as natural-disaster consultant Claude de Ville de Goyet argued in an op-ed published in the Pan American Journal of Public Health in 2004:

The inability to mourn a close relative, the lingering doubt on the whereabouts of the disappeared, and the legal limbo of the surviving spouse or child all contribute to the many potential mental health problems associated with disasters and the difficult rehabilitation process that follows.

Mental health is just as crucial as any other aspect of health following disasters. Giving survivors time to identify, mourn, and bury disaster victims in the same way that they would have, had their loved ones died in any other way, is an important part of the healing process.

Saturday 2 May 2015

http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/give-people-time-to-mourn

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Mozambique plane crash victims buried

The unidentified remains of those killed when a Mozambican plane crashed in northern Namibia in November 2013, were buried at the Gammams Cemetery in Pionierspark yesterday morning.

The aircraft crashed in the Bwabwata National Park in the Zambezi region in November 2013, while flying from Maputo to Luanda in Angola. There were 27 passengers and 6 crew members on board when the plane crashed, killing all on board.

The event was attended by officials of the Mozambican LAM airline and the managing director of Avbob Namibia, the funeral parlour that carried out the burials.

A Muslim cleric and a Christian pastor conducted services before the six coffins containing the remains of the deceased were lowered into three graves.

Mozambican airline officials yesterday refused to comment on the burials.

On board the plane were 10 Mozambicans, nine Angolans, five Portuguese citizens, a Portuguese-Brazilian citizen, a French citizen and a Chinese citizen. Early last year, the National Forensic Science Institute (NFSI) said there were more than 600 body parts and that they had positively identified 16 passengers.

The institute also said although some families were against the repatriation of the bodies at first, they changed their minds later.

Wednesday 29 April 2015

http://www.namibian.com.na/indexx.php?id=26113&page_type=story_detail

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24 unidentified migrants from latest Med tragedy laid to rest in inter-faith ceremony

24 migrants who died in this week’s tragedy off the coast of Libya were buried this morning after a remembrance ceremony held at Mater Dei Hospital. The victims are only a small fraction of the 700 or more people who died in the tragedy.

They were laid to rest in an inter-faith ceremony led by Gozo Bishop Mario Grech and Imam El Sadi.

A number of dignitaries attended the event, including Presiden Marie Louise Coleiro Preca, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, Opposition Leader Simon Busuttil and Members of Parliament. Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano, EU Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos and Minister of Social Solidarity of Greece Theano Fotiou also attended.

The bouquets of flowers that were sent by Maltese people after a call made by the Mater Dei Hospital CEO were lined up in the area leading to the helipad where the ceremony took place.

The caskets of the migrants were carried into the marquee tent by members of the Armed Forces.

One of the caskets was white, and it is that carrying the adolescent migrant who was among the 24 corpses recovered. The silence was broken by the cries of several members of the migrant community in Malta. A woman, wearing a baseball cap with ‘I am a survivor’ written on it, stood out from the crowd.

"The migrants were escaping from a desperate situation, they were trying to find freedom and a better life,” Bishop Grech said during the service. “There are 24 unidentified bodies here but we know that there are hundreds more at the bottom of the cemetery that the Mediterranean has become. We do not know their names, justthat they were trying to seek a better and more peaceful life. Irrespective of religion, culture and race, we know that they are our fellow human beings.”

Mgr. Grech said that, facing this situation, politicians can either quote the law and squabble over who is responsible for the rescue operations or they can forget all of this and help those in peril. “The way of the law is not enough to tackle the emerging migrant crisis. By choosing not to hear the cries for help of those in desperate need of help the situation will deflate into what Pope Francis calls the globalization of indifference.”

Merciful love demanded a reaching out to the roots which was causing this exodus, he said. "Face the situation with the eyes of the good Samaritan," he said.

Imam El Sadi thanked the Maltese and Italian governments and people for helping migrants in distress. “All are brothers before God. All people are migrants and their life was a journey." What had happened, he said, should raise awareness, and he went on to ask whether enough was being done to help the migrants at sea.

Later, two AFM bandsmen sounded the last post and the Bishop and the Imam read out the funeral rites of both religions. The caskets where then loaded into hearses and taken to Addolorata Cemetery, where the migrants will be buried in common graves.

Friday 24 April 2015

http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2015-04-23/local-news/Inter-faith-service-for-dead-migrants-at-Mater-Dei-Hospital-6736134318

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Moroccan activists fight to give dead migrants dignified burial

At least 700 migrants drowned in the Mediterranean sea after their boat sunk on Saturday evening. There were only 28 survivors, and only 24 bodies were recovered, according to the Italian coast guard. This follows Monday’s tragedy, which saw another 400 people lose their lives. Each time, only a tiny number of bodies are ever recovered. The rest either lie on the seabed or wash up on the shores of Mediterranean countries like Morocco, where fellow migrants and activists struggle to give as many as they can a dignified burial.

In 2014, an estimated 3,500 migrants died while attempting to make the crossing over the Mediterranean, according to figures released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The 2015 death toll is set to surpass this amount.

In most cases, the only other way to recover the bodies of migrants is to wait until the currents wash them ashore. Once washed up along Mediterranean coastlines, the responsibility falls on the shoulders of individual countries.

Laetitia Tura is the co-producer of "The Messengers", a documentary film that examines how the bodies of dead migrants are handled.

"[In Tunisia] bodies that routinely float ashore are treated like waste by the authorities. They're piled up in landfills well out of sight. In 2011, authorities dug a mass grave for the bodies. But in Tunisia, like elsewhere, the struggle to ensure that these migrants are given a dignified burial is above all the fruit of a collective effort led by individuals and NGOs."

Sédrik actively takes part in one such initiative to identify migrant bodies that appear on the shores of Morocco. Sédrik is from Cameroon and when he first came to Morocco he didn’t have papers. However, he gained legal status in a government-run amnesty programme and is now a legal resident. Sédrik keeps close tabs on migrants passing through Tangier on their way to Europe.



I'm often called to the morgue to try and identify the bodies of dead migrants. In Tangier, the 'mortician' [Editor's note: an employee of the morgue] is very cooperative. If any documents have been found with the bodies, he shares them with us. However, most of the time, migrants don’t carry identification.

The Tangier mortician also gives us time to identify the bodies. It's usually very difficult to recognise them as the bodies have already partly decomposed in the water.

Most bodies, however, are never actually identified. If migrants don't stop in Tangier before heading out to sea, other migrants don't know them and it's almost impossible to identify them.

"The cost of repatriating bodies is huge"

Hicham Rachidi is the secretary general of GADEM, an NGO dedicated to promoting migrant rights in Morocco. His NGO closely follows the drawn-out process of burying the bodies.

In general, bodies are buried where they are found. They are very rarely repatriated because the cost of doing so is always huge.

In 2004, the royal cabinet [Editor's note: a cabinet that consists of the King and his advisors] intervened to repatriate the bodies of 43 young Moroccans that had washed up on Spanish shores. The operation was very expensive and lasted months. They carried out DNA tests on the families, repatriated the bodies and organised burials. It cost 2,800 Euros to repatriate each body. But this isn't a regular occurrence.

A group of Moroccans also drowned off the coast of Soussa in Tunisia, but their bodies were never repatriated. It was really tough for the families. They saw the bodies of their loved ones in reports filmed by French broadcaster TV5 Monde but they never saw them for themselves.

"Bodies that aren't identified are given anonymous burials by local municipalities"

Most of those who try to cross the Mediterranean in boats are Sub-Saharan African migrants. It's appalling to see the number of bodies that wash ashore each year.

If they are identified, the job of handling the burial passes to the family or friends of the victims. In Casablanca, a Catholic burial costs around 800 euros. Occasionally, because it is cheaper, Christians are buried in Muslim cemeteries.

European countries are also confronting the difficulty of dealing with bodies. There is no EU-wide system in place to identify the corpses, so European countries carry out the task without cross-border cooperation. The job of identifying them is further complicated by the fact that migrants rarely carry documents.

Sara Prestianni works for Cimade, an NGO that promotes migrants' rights. She explains that the Italian system – a collaboration between scientists and authorities at the local and national level – is relatively organised and "at the end of this identification process, migrants have the right to be buried in a grave in their name. Local town councils handle the burials." In Spain, however, most of the bodies are buried in unmarked graves. In Greece, she adds, "despite the efforts of migrant NGOs, unidentified bodies often pile up in mass graves".

Thursday 23 April 2015

http://observers.france24.com/content/20150421-migrant-mediterranean-deaths-bodies-burial-morocco

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Uttarakhand High Court says won't dispose PIL on proper last rites in hurry

The Uttarakhand high court on Tuesday said that it won't dispose the public interest litigation regarding the last rites of those killed in the 2013 flash floods too soon and that the progress in the petition will happen step by step.

"I submitted the statement of higher officials of the state government which shows their ignorance about the disaster. The honourable high court told me to submit some suggestions regarding the problems in Kedar valley," said Ajay Gautam (42), the petitioner. The petition was attended by division bench of justices V K Bisht and Sarvesh Gupta.

The PIL was filed in June 2014 and it stated that bodies of the deceased lie decomposed and proper last rites have not been performed for thousands of people killed in the tragedy. The next hearing of the case is scheduled for June 22.

Earlier, the petitioner submitted a supplementary affidavit on March 24 stating that the responsible officials should be held accountable for deaths in June 2013 deluge. In 2014, the HC said DNA profiling of the bodies should be carried out so that it can be used to identify the deceased.

Wednesday 8 April 2015

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/dehradun/HC-says-wont-dispose-PIL-on-proper-last-rites-in-hurry/articleshow/46841952.cms

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Decoration day: Ebola leaves no graves to decorate in Liberia

An article on the importance of burial rituals following the ebola crisis.

Finda Fallah sat in her tiny one-bedroom apartment, boiling up rice and leftovers with one of the few children in her family still alive.

It was the night before Decoration Day, one of the nation’s most important public holidays, when Liberians clean, paint and decorate the graves of their relatives to honor lost loved ones.

But this year, after the Ebola outbreak decimated her family, there were no plots for Ms. Fallah to tidy. Burials were banned because of the highly contagious nature of corpses. The only grave Ms. Fallah could visit was that of her brother-in-law, whose funeral led to the infections in her family.

The thought of his grave made her angry, especially because her mother, sister, husband, two nephews and her 8-month-old baby, Fayiah, were cremated, leaving painfully little to mark their passing.

“I can’t go outside,” she said the next day, when the holiday came.

Decoration Day is a tradition adopted by freed American slaves who in the early 1800s settled in the area of West Africa that became Liberia. The national public holiday, which had its 99th anniversary on Wednesday, is often as much a celebration of life as a memorial to the dead.

But this year, it was a somber affair in the aftermath of the Ebola epidemic. The outbreak disrupted the intimate funeral practices that sometimes involve the bathing of dead relatives, the braiding of hair and the kissing and touching of bodies at burial services.

“May we pause to remember all of those who lost their lives during this Ebola crisis; I say they were heroes and not victims,” said the Rev. Christopher Toe, at a church service for Decoration Day on Wednesday. “Had they not died, the international community would not have come. Had they not died the U.S. government would not have sent all the U.S. Marines they sent.”

“They did not die in vain,” he added.

A handful of deputy ministers and ministry of health staff members sat in the pews of the half-filled Presbyterian church in the heart of the capital, Monrovia, for the national celebration. Members of the United Nations Ebola mission and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention joined them.

“Today is not an official government of Liberia memorial day ceremony for Ebola victims,” said Tolbert Nyenswah, the head of Liberia’s Ebola response. “Because Ebola is not over.”

The countdown until Liberia is officially declared Ebola-free is on. It began on March 5, when the last known Ebola patient, Beatrice Yardolo, 58, an English teacher, was discharged from a Chinese Ebola treatment unit.

Ms. Fallah, who herself was infected with Ebola, had to care for her children, nieces and nephews in an elementary school that was turned into a makeshift holding center where people suspected of having Ebola were housed, in squalid conditions, before being taken to one of the few treatment centers in the city at the time.

In a damp blue classroom, Ms. Fallah fed and cared for them, trying to separate the sick from the well. She was the only adult caring for seven children. Then the center was ransacked by angry residents in August, and she and her children were left wandering through the vast neighborhood, known as West Point.

Ms. Fallah still dreams about her little nephew, Tamba Nilo, who died in a treatment center, rolling around in a long T-shirt, saying “I’m hungry.”

Ms. Fallah believes her psychological survival now depends on forgetting. She bows her head and passes through special routes in the narrow sandy alleyways to avoid the school and the cramped house where she and her family used to live. She tries not to let her eyes dwell on women who remind her of her mother.

While Ms. Fallah survived, she does not know how much longer she can last, having only limited support from a nongovernmental organization that is paying her rent and sponsoring her niece’s school fees. Ebola survivors are now lobbying for more support.

Friday 13 March 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/world/africa/ebola-thief-of-rituals-leaves-no-graves-to-decorate.html?_r=0

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Disaster exposes Mutoko nightmare

The incessant torrents washed away bridges in the area and turned mostly dusty roads into gorges, locking the people of this area away from the rest of the world. Up to now, the bridges remain unrepaired while the roads are virtually inaccessible.

For those who live across the Nyamuzizi River, they have to cross the murky waters risking drowning and being attacked by crocodiles.

“We employ the services of some men who help carry us across rivers but at a price,” said Georgina Muswerota from Johane village.

The river daredevils charge a fee of US$5 for a single passage across the river. “If you have luggage the fee goes up,” she said.

Another villager, Aleck Chimanga said the worst affected were schoolchildren who were being forced to miss school many times because of the flooded river. The bridge at the river was swept away by storms three years ago.

“Children at times do not go to school, especially those who attend Chisambiro and Kapondoro schools. It becomes too dangerous for them,” he said with concern etched on his weathered face.

During the burial of victims of some of the Harare-Nyamapanda road accident which claimed 26 people mostly from that area, relatives had to use cattle-drawn scotchcarts to ferry the bodies of their loved ones across the river.

“We were lucky that it has not rained for the past few days otherwise it could have been difficult to get the bodies across,” said a villager.

As a result of the bad roads, all but one public transporter, the Zupco bus on which many villagers perished in the accident, have withdrawn their services.

“We have to wake up at 4am and cross the river then walk all the way to the shops where we catch the bus. If you miss it, then you have to try another day,” said Michael Karonda.

The villagers also blamed the large number of people who died in the recent accident on the inadequate transport.

“If there were many buses people would not have all been on one bus,” said Alfonse Siwetu, a brother to Vengai Chinyama who lost his wife and three children in the accident.

The district administrator for Mutoko, Cephas Mudavanhu said he was aware of the problem.

“We have embarked on a project to rehabilitate and upgrade the roads,” he said.

Chief Mutoko (Philemon Nyachoto) said the roads needed attention as a matter of urgency.

“We are aware that the government has no money but the roads should be improved,” he said.

The Standard last week experienced firsthand the transport nightmare that the villagers live with every day. The news crew had gone to report on the burial of the four members of the same family who were killed in the Zupco bus disaster.

We negotiated our vehicle over collapsed bridges which will certainly flood quickly should there be a heavy downpour. Because the normal route is no longer in use, we had to make several detours and by the time we finally got to Chisambiro Business Centre, I had lost all sense of direction.

Crossing Nyamuzizi River on foot was no easy feat, especially after plodding through a dense forest with tree branches hanging over the small footpath.

Clambering down the river bank was another challenge. The steep edges were dotted with smooth rocks which were so slippery we literally crawled on all fours to get to the base of the river.

On our way out of the river we met a villager who was coming from the funeral who told us it had taken her an hour to get to the homestead from the river. It was already getting dark and there was no doubt therefore that we had to cross the river in the darkness of the night if we had to make our way back to Harare.

Determined to cut the hour to at least 30 minutes, we dragged our weary bodies up the river bank and once again were plunged into another jungle with thistles and the same jagged footpath.

After more than an hour, we finally got to the Chinyamas just in time to catch the last fading light. The return trip in the dark was more than a nightmare.

Sunday 25 January 2015

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/2015/01/25/disaster-exposes-mutoko-nightmare/

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MH370 Crash: Spiritual rites dim as uncertainty of finding bodies abound

Perth braces as hundred of grieving and agitated families of MH370 passengers are expected to travel as soon as wreckage is found. Traveling to Perth is the closest they can get to the final place where their loved-ones were.

About 227 passengers from 15 nations and regions aboard MH370 plane. The passengers were a combination of different nationalities, spiritual beliefs and religions.

Finding the bodies of their relatives was particularly essential to consummate funeral rites that are vital to their spiritual beliefs.

Chinese Culture

Among the 227 passengers of the missing plane, two-thirds were Chinese, including 19 artists with six family members and four staff. They came from a calligraphy exhibition of their works in Kuala Lumpur.

The Chinese were notably the ones being agitated about the tragedy. Experts said the Chinese were behaving this way because of the funeral rites are embedded deeply in their culture.

According to Gary Sigley, a professor of Asian Studies at the University of Western Australia, Chinese believed the souls of those who die tragically into the unknown, or whose bodies are not recovered (as in the case of the MH370), will remain lost to the unknown.

In an interview with ABC News, Joy Chen, cultural icon and author of the popular Chinese-language book, "Do Not Marry Before 30," explained that Chinese culture needs the presence of a body to complete the funeral rites.

"In a Chinese culture, the living and the dead are part of the same family. There is such a strong sense of family. You are separated from your ancestor, but they are still a part of you."

Chen cited the Chinese viewed the holiday Qing Ming , meaning "sweep the grave," of particular importance. It is impossible to have this ritual without the presence of a body.

The idea of a funeral without the bodies being mourned is beyond the understanding of the Chinese culture. Chinese usually hire professional wailers to cry during funeral rites.

"When person first dies it's incredibly important to have a body. You have a wake for a whole day or more. The body is cleaned and dressed up in their best clothes and all the friends and relatives come around to pay respects. Then after that, there is a funeral procession and everyone goes to the grave site," Chen noted.

"Because in Chinese tradition, death is not just the end of a person's life, they are going to another world and the family continues to maintain our relations with our ancestors. We live among them all the time and even seek their help."

With this belief, the MH370 tragedy created a sense of uncertainty for the Chinese that their loved-ones will be peaceful.

"There is no sense of certainty. You haven't had the opportunity to pay respects from the passing of this world to the world of the dead. You don't get to acknowledge and respect their passage into the afterlife."

Hindu

As written in the book titled, "Hindu Rites of Passage: The Funeral," details of the exact date and time of a loved-one's death is important for the final rites.

"Otherwise, the soul will not rest in peace and it will become an earthbound spirit. The authorities should declare a date and time because there are specific ceremonies for a send-off of the dead," author P.S. Maniam wrote.

Hindu G. Subramaniam, whose son Puspanathan, 34, was on the flight, said he cannot imagine performing the final passage without the body of his son.

"I still believe my son will return as there is no death certificate issued on his status," he noted.

Tao

Tan Hoe Chieow, president of the Federation of Taoist Associations Malaysia, said closure can only be complete with the information of exact location and time of death.

"We need to know where it happened and go to the scene of the accident to perform rituals and prayers. It can be done without the physical body, but the priest and family must be in the same area. If the relatives are not given their final rites, they become lost souls," Chieow explained.

Muslims echoed the same sentiments. A funeral cannot be consummated without the body.

Christians And Bhuddists

While the Chinese families were agitated of the Malaysian government, Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's defense and acting transport minister, noted the families of the Australian passengers were calm.

"But the Chinese families must also understand that Malaysia also lost loved ones and many other nations also lost loved ones. I have seen images [of relatives] from Australia: very rational, understanding this is a global effort, not blaming Malaysia, because it is co-ordinating something unprecedented."

For Catholics, the body was not necessary to perform rites as they believe prayers will suffice. The same belief involves Bhuddists.

Chief Monk of Malaysia Datuk Rev K. Sri Dhammaratana said the Buddhists do not need body to perform the funeral rites.

"We don't need the body, we can just do the prayers as normal," he added.

"The body is not important as the mind and soul have already departed," Rev Sri Saranankara of Maha Karuna Buddhist Society noted.

Sardar Jagir Singh, president of the Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism, called for the Malaysian government to conduct memorial or tribute for all those who were lost in the MH370 tragedy.

"When it comes to prayers, whether to hold a funeral, the family must decide. Perhaps, there can be prayers for the soul before the last rites are held," he said.

Thursday 27 March 2014

http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/545193/20140327/mh370-missing-malaysia-airlines-christianity-buddhism-hinduism.html

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Remains of 163 dead Guatemalans given to families

The remains of 163 people, who were massacred in Guatemala's civil war, have been delivered to their relatives, officials say.

On Saturday, the bodies of victims of the 1982 Dos Erres massacre were given to their families who shouldered wooden coffins and took them to a local cemetery.

The carnage took place in Dos Erres, a small village in northern Guatemala, during the decades-long civil war on December 6, 1982. It was under the military rule of former dictator Efrain Rios Montt who stands trial for genocide.

At the time of the killings, the army was searching for 40 guns stolen by a guerrilla unit the previous October.

Dos Erres was invaded since the villagers were thought to be supportive of the guerrillas.

After the exhumation of the bodies, five soldiers were found guilty for the incident and were put on trial. They were sentenced to 6,000 years in jail, although Guatemala's utmost prison term is 50 years.

A UN-backed fact-finding committee registered 669 massacres during the civil war, of which 626 were attributed to government forces.

The Guatemalan conflict began in 1960 and continued for 36 years. According to a 1999 UN-sponsored report, some 200,000 people lost their lives or went missing during the clashes.

Sunday 8 December 2013

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/12/08/338783/163-guatemalan-bodies-given-to-families/

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Man who lived his life dedicated to ensuring a dignified burial for unclaimed bodies in Chennai dies in hospital

M.S. Sivakumar, who helped trace families of abandoned patients and helped orphans in hospital, died at Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (GH) on Wednesday.

It can only be tragic irony that a man who lived his life dedicated to ensuring a dignified burial for unclaimed bodies, died all alone in a ward at a government hospital.

On Tuesday, the 56-year-old was found lying unconscious beside his two-wheeler on EVR Periyar Salai opposite Central Station near Buhari Hotel. He had sustained a head injury.

Some passers-by and police who recognised him, admitted him to GH. An MRI and CT scan revealed a severe head injury. On Tuesday night, he underwent surgery.

However, around 12.30 p.m. on Wednesday, doctors declared him dead.

When the Thane cyclone struck in 2012 and six sailors went missing, Mr. Sivakumar was one of the few people who rushed to help the families in distress.

Mr. Sivakumar drove from one hospital to the other, offering his services. The helpful social worker, clad in white, would frequent government hospital mortuaries, police stations and the courts. He regularly petitioned the Madras High Court for dignified burials of unclaimed bodies.

Mr. Sivakumar had been honoured by GH several years ago for his services, at a function organised by the surgical gastroenterology department.

The hospital’s resident medical officer (RMO) Anand Pratap was among those who visited him soon after his admission.

“He would take possession of unclaimed bodies for burial and would ensure that orphans who come to the hospital for treatment were admitted to orphanages. He was of great help in tracing relatives of patients who were abandoned at the hospital,” Dr. Pratap said.

In September, Mr. Sivakumar helped trace the family of an Assamese man who was found unconscious in the yard of Egmore railway station. After the man died at the hospital, Mr. Sivakumar traced his family based on a photocopy of a bank passbook found on the man.

However, on Wednesday when he died, there was no one at Mr. Sivakumar’s side. “It was sad that he became an orphan himself today,” the RMO said.

Mr. Sivakumar is a native of Ayalur village in Palakkad and used to take up documentation work in the real estate sector, according to his friend P.T. Ali.

K. Narayanan, who had known Mr. Sivakumar for the past year said he was taking care of his ailing elder sister who lived in Ayanavaram. Mr. Ali said he later traced and informed Mr. Sivakumar's family, who live in Thrissur, Kerala.

Thursday 07 November 2013



http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/man-who-helped-families-in-need-dies-alone-in-chennai/article5322779.ece

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“Réquiem NN”: Reclaiming the Forgotten

One part heartbreaking study of the drug war that has ravaged Colombia for decades, one part series of meditations on the dead, “Réquiem NN” is a touching visual essay about a small town caught in the midst of a very large and dangerous conflict.

Since 2006, artist Juan Manuel Echavarría has traveled several times to the cemetery of Puerto Berrío, near the Magdalena River, to document the rituals of the local townspeople as they reclaim unidentified victims of the drug war. Fished out of the neighboring river, these No Names (NN) are given new identities by the locals, who also decorate their graves and honor their memories as if for lost relatives.

The film follows the lives of several of the people, from the fishermen who find the bodies, to the doctors who perform the autopsies, to the citizens who take it upon themselves to care for the deceased. Some notable individuals include: Hernán, the “soul keeper,” a sort of caretaker of the dead, performing a midnight mass at the cemetery for the locals; Jair, a man who pays daily visits to the tomb of “Gloria,” a young victim who he claims talks to him in his sleep; and Blanca, a mother who prays every day for the safe return of a missing son and daughter, two innocents possibly caught in the crossfire of the never-ending drug war.

Echavarría has photographed the town for years, and his experience behind the camera is apparent throughout the film. He avoids flashy techniques, keeping the camera trained on the individual as he or she shares a story about a personal encounter with the NNs. One gets the sense that the film is like a moving photo gallery, a fully-sculpted representation of what his photo series evokes. As we follow the separate narratives, Echavarría includes still shots of different tombs, adorned with flowers and plaques bearing the unknown’s new name. Or, he cuts to images of the Magdalena River as it flows lazily by, a swollen body of water filled with gnarled logs and who knows what else, its mysteries hidden beneath the murky surface.

It’s important to note the absence of a soundtrack. Whether that was due to budgetary limitations is not entirely clear, as the film does have a certain stripped-down quality, a refreshing directness in the way it approaches its subject matter. Regardless, it was a wise choice, as throwing in a moody, atmospheric score may seem effective at first thought, but the fact that silence is the general background noise between individual stories allows the viewer to focus even more on what’s on screen. After all, this is a story about a town that, in every moment, is affected by the dead. And cemeteries are quiet places.

If Echavarría has a goal for his documentary other than portraying individual lives affected by the growing number of unknowns, it is the argument of belief as an essential part of a community. There is an accepted notion among locals that providing care for an NN guarantees divine protection and special favors. As such, people rush to claim an NN whenever a new unknown corpse arrives, especially as fire fighters, not local citizens, are the only ones now allowed to retrieve bodies from the river. The medical examiners are frustrated by the local ritual, as they say it gets in the way of their procedures. However, a local cemetery worker argues that it is helpful that people provide individual care for the unknowns, as they willfully pay for separate tombs for the NNs, therefore keeping the unknown from being buried in a mass grave and making it easy to identify the bones later on.

Whether “Réquiem NN” is a series of ghost stories or a straightforward examination of modern life in a war-ravaged country, the people it depicts make it an interesting film. Consider Hernán, the soul keeper. In one scene, he examines a diary of his daily tasks as the resident caretaker of the dead. He expresses weariness in this ongoing relationship with the unknowns. He mentions how he witnessed his first claiming of an NN when he was 14 years old; he is now 57. Or, consider the story of Jesús, a man who lives close to the river and would awaken to the sounds of gunfire. “Bullets were my alarm clock,” he reminisces. He would go to the river and collect the bodies that he always knew were there. Once, he was confronted by the killers, telling him to keep quiet, or what happened to the NN would happen to him, too. Soon after, the thoughts of the dead were always on his mind, to the point that he couldn’t drink anything without tasting blood.

Is this the state of the world? This endless cycle of violence? Echavarría hopes that it isn’t, despite the grim war in his home country. Hope exists throughout the narrative. A fisherman tells a tale of finding a severed head in the waters, but ends with how he offered up a prayer and gave it a proper burial. A mother talks of people promising to exact revenge against the ones who took away her children, but she rebukes this statement, wishing instead for a world without the need for bloodshed. In one poignant scene, we witness two separate families coming together to celebrate the birthday of an NN that they both have claimed. The birthday, as well as the identity of the unknown, are both fabricated—created by the imaginations of those who have chosen to respect the dead in this manner. And yet it is in this act of believing, no matter how farfetched for other cultures, that there lies hope. Perhaps they act in vain, investing money in rituals that only serve to assuage their own guilt. But it is in these choices, in these celebrations against death, that we find our humanity. Through our actions, we defy oblivion.

“Réquiem NN” is showing October 8-14 at The Museum of Modern Art. Running time: 67 minutes; 2013; in Spanish w/English subtitles. Directed by Juan Manuel Echavarría

Tuesday 8 October 2013

http://cinespect.com/2013/10/requiem-nn-reclaiming-the-forgotten/

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A cemetery where most of Karachi’s anonymous end up

Wrapped in a white shroud, the body lies in the vast ground. The undertaker steps forward to lead the funeral prayer, while his aide and the ambulance driver stand behind him in silence. Three men pray for the departed soul of a stranger.

Stretched across thirty acres, the Edhi graveyard in Mawach Goth is the only cemetery in Karachi where hundreds of thousands of unknown men, women and children lie buried. Some are identified but most remain anonymous – forever.

“Hundreds of bodies come here every month and hardly one percent of them are identified,” said Abdul Sattar Edhi, the founder of Edhi Foundation.

When a body is identified sometimes, the relatives mark the grave with flowers or pay to make a cemented tomb with an epitaph. But a fraction of the families also insist on taking the remains and burying them in their family graveyards.

Keeping the record

Unidentified bodies that arrive at the Edhi morgue are buried in this graveyard after three days. “We take a mugshot and allot a serial number to the body,” said a morgue official, Ghulam Hussain.

The Edhi Foundation keeps the records of the bodies for five years and then uses the space for fresh bodies. “The bodies are usually identified within the first few weeks, but we still wait. We can still locate the grave for five years,” Edhi said.

One of the undertakers, Mohammed Nazir, has the duty to take the relatives coming to the graveyard with the serial number from the Edhi office. “Sometimes it becomes difficult to hold back your tears,” he says.

Fresh flowers are lying on the graves as Nazir points toward the various bodies identified in the past few days. Some of the graves are well-made with mosaic tiles.

The traces of the grave generally begin to fade after three months, as the steel-plated cardboards marking the graves turn rusty and mildewed owing to fungus.

“People usually come within weeks after we bury a corpse,” said Nazir, “But if they take a couple of months, the signpost begins to fade away. After a certain time, we rely on guess work, going by the column and row calculations.”

Room for everyone

The man who was just buried must have been in his mid-twenties. He was found dead in Gulshan-e-Iqbal but the cause of his death remains a mystery. “Drug addiction probably,” guesses Haq Nawaz, a morgue staffer.

Although most of the dead who remain unidentified are tramps and addicts living on the roadsides of Karachi, in many cases the bodies go unidentified due to the severity of road accidents or bomb blasts, leaving the faces recognisable.

Nazir recalls the most recent case of mass burial being the tragic Baldia factory fire, where dozens of unidentified people were buried after months of waiting for the DNA results.

Given the number of people dying everyday, the numbers of unidentified bodies have doubled in the past five years, he says. “Be it bomb blasts or random killings, a lot of people die on the streets; which only adds to my work.”

Nazir estimates the Edhi graveyard will be full in the next three years. “There is space, but we will need more in the coming years, as we try not to disturb the graves for five years.”

Just enough space

After the short prayer, meanwhile, the undertakers place the body in one of the graves – dug out in straight column like a military trench. And they pick up the spades.

The average space allotted to each body is two and a half feet deep and slightly over one foot in breadth – just enough for a human corpse.

Finally, a metal-plated cardboard is planted on the grave. This one read: 77,369 – the dead man’s last mark on the face of this earth.

Monday 9 September 2013

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-4-200924-A-cemetery-where-most-of-Karachis-anon

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