Time to lay them down to rest

WHAT we have feared all along has happened.
Forensic experts, who left Madang last weekend, have said not all of the remaining 27 victims of the fatal air crash on Oct 13 can be identified.
They are not to be blamed. Their job was already a most difficult one given the nature of the accident. Many bodies were burnt beyond recognition. Many more had limbs and body parts missing. Piecing everything together was already a near-impossible task before the team began their work.
While the experts might be able to finally piece everything together, we do not have the luxury of time. It is, as we expect, a gruesome task to probe and prod bo­dies that are already burnt badly and decomposing –  even if in a cool room.
While it is a very Papua New Guinean custom to res­pect the bodies of the dead and to repatriate remains to their area of origin, this is one occasion when this tradition will be impossible to adhere to.
The living relatives have grieved enough for their loved ones. The dead are mercifully unfeeling at present.
While it would be best to lay them to final rest in that part of the country they come from, it is impractical. In the end, they are Papua New Guineans and any place they are laid to rest is their land, a part of their country.
The best option left to authorities now is to make a decision as to how best to give the most respectful burial for those bodies and limps and body parts that remain unidentified.
We propose a mass burial of the remaining bodies and the erection of a memorial to the memory of the dead including individual plaques containing the names of all the dead.
Sure, it has not been done before but, under the circumstances, there is little else that can be done.
Medical services director at Modilon Hospital, Dr Billy Selve, tells us that ante-mortem and the post-mortem work have already been undertaken with added personal information from relatives collated but difficulties in obtaining dental and other medical records have made positive identification difficult.
It is a fact that dental and medical records for most Papua New Guineans are very poor. Indeed, most records are not even kept by the people but at hospitals and clinics which sometimes tend to lose them.
Selve said that the experts found it difficult piecing missing limbs or teeth to skulls without the primary identification which includes the dental records, DNA or fingerprints and medical history papers.
“These are inconclusive results. None that I spoke to had anything obvious as to what belonged to whom. We have very bad dental records in the country in terms of who had an extraction or filling done and at what hospital. Calling them for verification is another headache when all you end up with is a medical card that says they came in with only flu or fever,” he said.
There is the added difficulty of relatives having to travel to Madang and in having them stay in the town until a body of a relative is positively identified.
So far only nine skulls have been found to be intact, with the rest incinerated; 18 are only half bodies from either the top down or bottom up with various limbs missing.
Those who cannot be identified will be termed as ‘missing persons’ under the Coroners Act of 1953. The act states that after six months if that person cannot be identified or found than they will be declared as “dead or deceased” but of course that is just the legal process. They are deceased.
A large part of the K500,000 donated by Prime Minister Peter O’Neill for repatriating the bodies and living relatives should be put into erecting a proper memorial tomb for the burial of the bodies. We would also like to suggest that the crash site, where many body parts have basically disintegrated in the flaming inferno, should also be secured from the local landowning group and a memorial erected there.