Crisis in Haiti: Hundreds of bodies pile up in morgue

[seemslikeadream]

Kansas City Star (subscription), MO - 3 hours ago
... The failure of Haiti's government to attend to the most basic needs of the poor ... in the capital had added to the corpses piling up in the morgue, three trucks ...

https://registration.realcities.com/reg/login.do?url=http://www.kansas...


if you don't have a sub.


Haitian hillside a dumping ground for bodies

BY JOE MOZINGO

[email protected]


TITANYEN, Haiti - Near an old car axle on a dry hillside, the small bleached-white skull of a child rests under a thorny bush. Nearby a pelvis is still wrapped in the tattered elastic band of a boy's underwear.

Bones are scattered for hundreds of yards -- teeth, femurs, vertebrae, skulls -- half covered, like the broken bottles and car parts, in the fine red dust of this eroded coastline.

This is where the main morgue in Port-au-Prince, 20 miles away, brings the destitute and unclaimed, the thousands of people who die every year with no means for a private funeral.

Administrators at the General Hospital, which runs the morgue, say they make sure they properly bury the bodies. But some say otherwise.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/8222762.htm



GRIM LANDSCAPE: Milo Austan, who walks the hills north of Port-au-Prince for sticks to make brooms, says he has come across human remains for years. PETER ANDREW BOSCH/HERALD STAFF




UNCLAIMED: A worker, carrying the body of a baby, makes his way through corpses piling up at the General Hospital's morgue in Port-au-Prince after weeks of political violence. PETER ANDREW BOSCH/HERALD STAFF

By Ibon Villelabeitia
REUTERS
7:04 a.m. March 15, 2004



Statistics of people killed since bloodshed began on Feb. 5 have fallen victim to chaos. Estimates by rights groups range from 200 to several hundred. Many killings occurred in the provinces, where relatives are afraid of taking their dead to hospitals for fear of persecution and bury them in secret.

U.S. Marines spearheading an international peace mission say they have killed at least six people in battles. But they admit that helping the Red Cross retrieve the bodies has been difficult. In some cases, U.S. Marines say, bodies of gunmen vanish after nighttime shootouts, leaving behind only casings and a trail of blood leading off into the labyrinth of slums.

"Once dead, the body has no value," said Max Beauvoir, a 69-year-old "hougan," or voodoo priest. "The real value of the human being lies within his spirit. Your spirit makes you beautiful or horrible," said Beauvoir, sitting in his white linen trousers in his voodoo temple outside Port-au-Prince.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20040315-0704-haiti-dead.html