No room in the cemetery for Haiti dead

[Jamastiene]

No room in the cemetery for Haiti dead

Last home of country's most famous families turns from place of respect and mourning into installation of horror

Ed Pilkington in Port-au-Prince
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 17 January 2010 21.19 GMT

Even in death, there is no dignity for the abandoned people of Haiti. The Grand Cimetière, the last home of the country's most famous families, has in five days turned from a place of respect and mourning into an installation of horror.

<snip>

Every five minutes a new body is brought in, most in simple coffins, fashioned out of rough bits of salvaged wood; one has been made out of old cupboard doors. Suddenly, six men rush by, carrying on their shoulders a fancy lacquered coffin, heading for one of the tombs of a wealthy family.

Poor Haitian families don't enjoy such luxury of mourning. A tomb on the right side of the walkway has been opened to allow the body of a 14-year-old girl, swaddled in white cloth and laid out in a pick-up truck, to be added beside the remains of her parents. Above the opening, the word "réparation" has been scrawled. We ask the cemetery workers standing nearby what that signifies. "It means the family has no money," one worker tells us in ­broken French. "They cannot pay." A truck with the young girl on board later drove off, her body unburied.

How much money are we talking about, we ask, what are you charged to lay a teenaged girl to rest? A hundred dollars, the workers say.

<snip>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/17/no-room-cemetery-haiti

Imagine having to fork over three years worth of your salary on the spot or seeing your family member buried in a mass grave where you cannot pay your respects.

:(

[iamjoy]

1. Even In Death

the wealthy have it better.

son of a bitch.

[tnlefty]

2. You're back to zero.

This is heartbreaking and disgusting at the same time. Thanks, I think.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. I have been thinking about this every day

it's a nightmare, horrible. Reminds me of the largely ignored Darfur and Rwanda.

[TicketyBoo]

4. No words.

Simply no words.

[Mind_your_head]

5. Hey, focus on respect for the still living.....

the dead are gone and beyond our reach. We all have our 'chance in the sun' and no one knows when their time here on this earth is done. I think we all are grateful to our ancestors who "got us this far". I doubt our deceased ancestors would want us to spend our "earthy capital" to deify their memory. If WE, their progeny, live our life adequately that is what our ancestors "lived for".

[jberryhill]

6. It's a fairly simple issue of space

I doubt there is a city anywhere that has space for 100k individual graves.

That's roughly one third the size of Arlington.

At a thousand a day, you'd be looking at a hundred days to bury each one.

It's sort of remarkable that with all that needs done, time, tools, effort and equipment have been used to make coffins and dig graves.

[Maru Kitteh]

7. Unimaginable as this is, at least these people know where their loved ones are.

So many will never know.