Bloated Bodies litter Myanmar, forgotten after the cyclone
Pastor Dale Morgan
Bloated Bodies litter Myanmar, forgotten after the cyclone*
The Associated Press
Sunday, May 11, 2008; 1:40 PM
ON THE PYAPON RIVER, Myanmar -- As the bloated bodies rise and fall with
the current, women scrub clothes along the river bank, villagers bathe
to cool themselves and a lone child sits on a dock staring aimlessly
into the water.
But with little aid getting through to desperate cyclone survivors, the
dead have largely been forgotten _ left to decay where the brackish
waters carried them or waiting to be pulled out to sea by the rising tides.
"The first few we saw, we were all very shocked," said U Pinyatale, a
monk from the area who has prayed for the dead. "After a while, there
were just too many."
More than 50 bodies can be spotted in just three hours on the river.
Many have turned white as they float entwined in mangrove trees, where
they remain lodged. The smell of dead fish permeates the humid air as
dozens of small boats ferrying roofing supplies and rice navigate around
the corpses, but no one seems to notice.
"In some areas there are 5,000 bodies in waterways, stuck in fields and
in the trees," said Craig Strathern, spokesman for the International
Committee of the Red Cross in Yangon, Myanmar's biggest city. "We've got
a combination of seriously traumatized people themselves who are
concentrating on their basic survival."
Cyclone Nargis left nearly 62,000 people dead or missing. The U.N.
estimates at least 1.5 million have been severely affected in the
military-run country, with many of them still struggling to receive
rations of food and clean water.
Body removal remains difficult because some of the worst-hit areas are
located in remote villages crisscrossed by a spider web of rivers and
canals. Another big setback revolves around the ruling junta's refusal
to open the door to international aid workers, forcing agencies
operating in Myanmar to rely on their limited local staff members for
all relief work.
The situation differs greatly from the 2004 Asian tsunami, which killed
nearly 230,000 people. In worst-hit Banda Aceh, Indonesia, bodies were a
top priority early on, driven largely by Muslim tradition that calls for
burying the dead within the first day. Corpses were dumped in mass
graves as big as football fields, with aid workers, soldiers and
volunteers all working together.
During the same crisis in Phuket, Thailand, emphasis also was placed on
ensuring bodies were taken to refrigerated areas where they were kept
for identification.
"What's often overlooked is the fact that people do want to find the
dead and give them a proper burial, and it's important," said Eric
Stover, lead author of a critical report published last year about
Myanmar's broken health system.
"What happens with those relatives or those who survive, they can also
go into this kind of limbo world thinking their (family members) are
dead but not actually knowing until they have the funeral."
Bodies are cremated or buried in different parts of Myanmar. It is
essential for Buddhist monks to chant and pray for the dead on the first
day. The funeral typically occurs on day three, and on the seventh day a
religious ceremony is held where prayers and chants continue to ensure
the soul moves on. Otherwise, wandering ghosts can remain.
The monk, Pinyatale, said some people simply want the bodies to be
sucked out to sea because they believe if someone touches them, that
person will be cursed with bad luck and haunted by the unsettled spirit.
"People are scared. Some people hear voices from the river at night:
'Help me! Help me!'" he said. "But when people walk to the river, there
is nothing there."
The carcasses of dead livestock, such as buffalo, also have not been
removed from areas in the low-lying delta where entire villages were
leveled by the May 3 storm, which packed 120-mph winds and 12-foot-high
storm surges from the sea.
Stover, from the School of Public Health at the University of
California, Berkeley, said the military is often best at helping
identify bodies in massive natural disasters because they are trained to
do so for war. But he said his contacts who have visited the worst-hit
areas say they have seen no soldiers helping to remove corpses.
"There may be cases were neighbors came back and because of the tidal
surge, the bodies were dispersed," he said. "It's gonna be difficult.
That's the real crisis here."
___
Associated Press Medical Writer Margie Mason in Bangkok, Thailand
contributed to this report.