PHUKET: The Tsunami Victim Cemetery north of Phuket, housing about 380 nameless people who were unidentified victims of the 2004 natural disaster, appears to have been abandoned.
People from 40 countries who supported the forensic detective endeavor known as the Thai Tsunami Victims' Identification process will be shocked and saddened to hear this news.
Phuketwan yesterday found about 40 keys in four large bunches, left behind at the cemetery. We believe the keys are to a number of buildings on the cemetery property and possibly also to other buildings at the nearby TTVI repatriation centre, where relatives once went to reclaim family members.
Naming about 3000 unidentified dead and restoring them to their loved ones was what the TTVI was all about.
The keys we found are in bunches, with labels on some of them, including DNA Cont. No 1, DNA Cont. No 2, and Investigation Team. Yesterday, both the cemetery and the repatriation centre appeared to be abandoned. The only sign of life was a couple of barking dogs.
The tsunami of December 26, 2004 was Thailand's worst natural disaster, killing almost 5400 people on Phuket and along the Andaman coast.
News of what had happened on Phuket and in Phi Phi and Khao Lak brought an unsurpassed outpouring of sympathy from people around the globe, and within a couple of days the full horror of the Indian Ocean tsunami emerged, with 160,000 deaths in the Indonesian province of Aceh, and thousands more in Sri Lanka and India.
On Phuket and throughout the Andaman, about half of the dead were tourists from all over the world. Some were killed in five-star resorts, and their identification was swept away with them.
Others were carried into construction workers' shanties, or local villages, and the bodies of the workers and the villagers were swept into ritzy resorts.
The decision was made to identify all 5400 victims, but the joint effort by forensic police, pathologists and dentist from all over the globe fell just 380 short.
So the remaining unidentified tsunami nameless were buried at Baan Bang Maruan, a short drive north of Phuket in Phang Nga.
There has never been any formal announcement of the TTVI process being brought to an end. Nation by nation, identification teams were withdrawn, until the remaining detectives were all Thais.
We took the keys with us yesterday for safekeeping. Oddly, they were left in a plastic zipbag, filled with water.
If someone knows to whom the keys belong, and what the future holds for the cemetery and the repatriation centre, please let us know.
People from 40 countries who supported the forensic detective endeavor known as the Thai Tsunami Victims' Identification process will be shocked and saddened to hear this news.
Phuketwan yesterday found about 40 keys in four large bunches, left behind at the cemetery. We believe the keys are to a number of buildings on the cemetery property and possibly also to other buildings at the nearby TTVI repatriation centre, where relatives once went to reclaim family members.
Naming about 3000 unidentified dead and restoring them to their loved ones was what the TTVI was all about.
The keys we found are in bunches, with labels on some of them, including DNA Cont. No 1, DNA Cont. No 2, and Investigation Team. Yesterday, both the cemetery and the repatriation centre appeared to be abandoned. The only sign of life was a couple of barking dogs.
The tsunami of December 26, 2004 was Thailand's worst natural disaster, killing almost 5400 people on Phuket and along the Andaman coast.
News of what had happened on Phuket and in Phi Phi and Khao Lak brought an unsurpassed outpouring of sympathy from people around the globe, and within a couple of days the full horror of the Indian Ocean tsunami emerged, with 160,000 deaths in the Indonesian province of Aceh, and thousands more in Sri Lanka and India.
On Phuket and throughout the Andaman, about half of the dead were tourists from all over the world. Some were killed in five-star resorts, and their identification was swept away with them.
Others were carried into construction workers' shanties, or local villages, and the bodies of the workers and the villagers were swept into ritzy resorts.
The decision was made to identify all 5400 victims, but the joint effort by forensic police, pathologists and dentist from all over the globe fell just 380 short.
So the remaining unidentified tsunami nameless were buried at Baan Bang Maruan, a short drive north of Phuket in Phang Nga.
There has never been any formal announcement of the TTVI process being brought to an end. Nation by nation, identification teams were withdrawn, until the remaining detectives were all Thais.
We took the keys with us yesterday for safekeeping. Oddly, they were left in a plastic zipbag, filled with water.
If someone knows to whom the keys belong, and what the future holds for the cemetery and the repatriation centre, please let us know.
How sad, tragically gone and now apparently forgotten.
Posted by Peter Dunn on June 6, 2011 13:01