Brazil has strived to provide a dignified burial to the nine Africans who washed up unintentionally on its shores while pursuing a better life in Europe. The remains of the nine people who arrived dead in a boat adrift on the 13th were buried this Thursday in Belém, the capital of the Amazonian state of Pará, where the boat arrived. The burial consisted of a secular ceremony attended by representatives of the many Brazilian organizations involved in the case, from the Federal Police (PF) or the scientific police to the Navy, the firefighters or the municipal guard of Bragança, the city the one in which the cayuco and the corpses reached dry land. Researchers maintain that they set sail from Mauritania towards the Canary Islands (Spain) and that for some unknown reason they lost their way and were dragged to the American shore of the Atlantic.
The police later revealed the latest developments in the case. The nine bodies are adult men. Next to them were found papers on which telephone numbers from Mauritania, Mali and Congo and a stove to heat food were written down. DNA and dental samples have been taken from all of them, and fingerprints have also been taken from seven of them, following Interpol protocols. Brazilian investigators are already in contact with police in foreign countries and the International Red Cross.
The police suspect that there were at least 25 people on board and that they died of thirst and hunger, as the superintendent of the Federal Police in Pará, José Roberto Peres, explained to this newspaper last week. None of the bodies have been identified so far. Forensics have already taken DNA, dental and fingerprint samples, but the analysis has just begun. The migratory route from Africa to the Canary Islands is increasingly used, arrivals to the islands have increased dramatically so far in 2024.
The bodies have been temporarily buried so that, if they are identified and their loved ones located, they can give them final burial where they consider appropriate, according to a note from the PF.
Representatives of the International Red Cross, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) were also invited and participated in the simple event held at the São Jorge cemetery, a municipal cemetery in Belem.
The agents also located 27 mobile phones on the boat, which are being analyzed although the police already warn that they are so rusty that expectations of them offering information are low. They also found at least two identification documents. Thanks to these, they have reached the conclusion that the passengers were from Mauritania and Mali and that they undertook the journey to the Spanish archipelago after January 17 due to a border stamp.
The Brazilian fishermen who sighted the boat and gave the alert found eight bodies inside the boat and a ninth floating nearby. The authorities immediately thought that they were foreigners, emigrants, because there was no warning of shipwrecks on the coast. Twenty-five layers of rain found next to the bodies make researchers think that at least as many people were traveling.
UNHCR recalls that the Brazilian authorities consider that both Mali and Burkina Faso are experiencing a serious situation in which the violation of human rights is widespread and therefore has more agile processes to process asylum requests from people from those countries. as well as Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela and Syria.
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