The grim task of identifying victims
Volunteers recover dead migrants from shores of the Mediterranean and Aegean seas
IBRAHIM AL-ATTOUSHI
ZUWARAH, Libya — Ibrahim al- Attoushi was looking for another body. Nearly every day, the dead washed ashore on this remote stretch of beach, migrants whose boats had capsized on their way to Europe. This morning there had been a report of one more.
Another body meant another unmarked grave in the city’s cemetery, where hundreds of migrants have already been buried. It meant another statistic to record in a thick white binder. But mostly, for Attoushi and several other volunteer aid workers, it meant another person to identify, and another grieving family to track down.
In the shadow of Europe’s worst migration crisis in decades, teams like this are working on the shores of the Mediterranean and the Aegean to identify the dead. There is perhaps no job that more captures the scale of the tragedy. Over 3,000 people have drowned trying to get to Europe so far this year.
Attoushi scanned the beach, where the ebbing tide splashed over rocks and debris. He passed a life-jacket, a cellphone, a shoe and then the cracked hull of a smuggler’s boat. This country’s shores had become a reliquary for those who had fled their homes for the dangerous sea crossing, tens of thousands of Africans, South Asians and Arabs.
Some of the victims Attoushi’s team finds look like they are sleeping. Others hardly look human at all. This time, trudging along the coast, the team was hoping for a body that offered any kind of clue. It could be a tattoo in Bengali script or a phone with a Nigerian SIM card in a pocket or a folded letter with a Syrian address. Anything that would help narrow their search to a country or a city or a house where a family waited.
“If we’re going to identify the person, we’re going to need something,” said Attoushi, his eyes on the tide.
Some migrants have become so acutely aware of the dangers at sea that they’ve begun writing relatives’ phone numbers on their life jackets.
When families don’t hear from their loved ones journeying to Europe, they start tracing their routes. They search Google for the city from which their brother or sister last called. They send Whats-App messages to the people travelling with their son or daughter. Often, their search leads them to the Facebook page of the Zuwarah Red Crescent, the local chapter of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Attoushi, a volunteer with the group, checks the messages every day, some of them in broken English.
Sometimes Attoushi is able to help people locate their relatives, sending a picture of the deceased as confirmation. He’ll then return to the graveyard, and on the wooden stick where there was only a number, he’ll write a name.
The pain of identifying the dead is even more acute for those who lose their relatives to tragedy while travelling with them to Europe. Last month, after a Turkish police officer found the corpse of a threeyear-old boy on the shore, officials went searching for his father. Within hours, they found Abdullah Kurdi, a 40-year-old Syrian who had watched his two children slip from his grasp as their boat sank en route to Greece. The officers drove Kurdi to a two-storey yellow morgue on the Turkish coast to identify the tiny corpse.
His son’s body, captured in a now-iconic photo, had become a symbol of the migrant crisis and would catalyze the Canadian election, after news broke that the Kurdis had wanted to come to Canada.
Only a fraction of deceased migrants are identified.
“In some of these countries, it’s hard enough to find resources to devote to the living migrants, let alone the dead,” said Frank Laczko, head of the Global Migration Data Analysis Center at the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
On the recent September morning, Attoushi was accompanied by five other volunteers searching the coastline. After two hours, one of them called over to Attoushi. The body had been found.
It was missing its head. The skin had been bleached by the sun. Its clothes were missing.
The body was placed in a white plastic bag. It was taken to the city’s one-room morgue. Attoushi paused over the paper where he was supposed to record details of the deceased. There was nothing to write.
Attoushi knew there would be more bodies like this one.
“The boats are still leaving from Libya,” he said, looking at the ground. “And this is where the tide takes the dead.”
The boats are still leaving from Libya. And this is where the tide takes the dead.
LIBYAN RED CROSS VOLUNTEER