THE THAI Tsunami Victim Identification process is at a standstill, with members of the unit unpaid since October and representatives from 13 countries set to discuss the financial crisis on Monday.

The key objective, identifying the nameless victims of the 2004 tsunami, has come to a halt amid serious concerns about the successful conclusion of the project that once garnered international praise.

At one time hailed as world's greatest example of forensic detective science at work, insiders at the TTVI have told Phuketwan that the unit is now split by factions. Its future is uncertain.

Representatives from Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden, Britain and the United States are set to meet TTVI officials in Bangkok on Monday.

Details of the circumstances that led to non-payment of the 19 staff of the TTVI remain unclear, but one official at an embassy told Phuketwan yesterday that the international funding had simply run out.

The TTVI unit is also believed to be deeply divided about how the international project should be brought to an end, and whether moral considerations and families' need for closure should take precedence over forensic science imperatives.

About 380 nameless bodies remain buried in special tombs at the TTVI cemetery at Bang Maruan, a drive of an hour or so north from Phuket.

The debate is over whether absolute proof should be required for establishing the identity of the remaining victims, or whether some compromises should be made to bring closure to as many grieving families as possible.

While the international Interpol standard requires 99.9 percent certainty of identification, it is understood that at least some of the remaining nameless victims can muster 80 percent certainty.

The final chapter in the identification of tsunami victims in Thailand may have brought one corruption scandal and now a pay dispute.

But it should not be forgotten that the process has returned thousands of nameless victims from 40 countries to their families.

Another issue: if the process is to end, what happens to the identified but unwanted bodies?

There are 24 identified bodies of Burmese awaiting collection in above-ground cooled shipping containers, but the government of Myanmar denies that the victims are its citizens.

Another tsunami victim, from Nepal, was identified as long ago as January 2006. The TTVI has been awaiting collection of his body ever since.

The first 40 days of identifications after the December 26 2004 tsunami, before an international team from more than 30 countries took over, produced an unknown number of mistakes that have continued to bedevil the system ever since.

Somewhere between one in 20 and one in five of those early identifications were probably wrong, forensic experts say, making a successful conclusion to the entire project more difficult.

Winding up of the TTVI process at this point would leave open the question of who takes responsibility for the unidentified bodies buried at Bang Maruan, where international funding has preserved them in neat rows in a cemetery where the flags of more than 40 countries figure on the entrance nameplate.

As well as going unpaid for five months, TTVI staff at the cemetery are understood to be disappointed at the apparent lack of interest from senior officers in Bangkok, who seldom visit.

The TTVI, an international unit established in February 2005 that later was left to the Thais alone to run, is a mix of civilians and officers seconded from the Royal Thai Police.

Nitinai Sornsongkram, a civilian who is Project Manager at the Bang Maruan centre opposite the cemetery, is among those who believe that greater effort should be made to return bodies to families, even with less than 99.9 percent certainty.

The present ructions about pay and a recent corruption scandal involving one TTVI officer will horrify hundreds of police, forensic pathologists and dentists from countries all over the world who took part in the international identification process.

Of the 5400 victims of the tsunami in Thailand, about half were Thai and the rest were tourists or Burmese workers and their families.



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