In Ecuador, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, we remember these images of bodies abandoned, even burned in the streets of the coastal city of Guayaquil, because the local morgue could not receive such large numbers. The scene seems to repeat itself with the victims.
3 mins
With our correspondent in Quito, Eric Samson
The reasons why these scenes are repeated in Guayaquil, the largest city inEcuador, are different from Covid-19. Dozens of often unidentified corpses are literally decomposing, some for more than two months. The authorities have not given a precise figure, but some press reports still speak of 200 bodies.
We talked about it a lot on RFIthere war declared since the beginning of January against the 22 organized crime groups now considered terrorist by the government has caused and continues to cause many victims, many more than before. Some are not identified, this is often the case with gang members who kill each other. When they are identified, sometimes families will not remove the bodies that accumulate in the morgue, hence the problem.
There are so many that forensic doctors do not have the time to carry out all the analyses, all the DNA tests which are obligatory by law before being able to hand over the bodies to the families or to those who claim them. Before authorizing burial, forensic doctors must exhaust all possible techniques (DNA, dental prints, etc.) to identify the corpses and this takes time. Some people have already waited more than two months and still cannot bury their loved ones.
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Broken refrigerated containers
The bodies are decomposing because authorities had installed refrigerated containers to store excess bodies, but two were damaged, particularly following recent power outages in April caused by lack of rain. One, moreover, has still not been repaired and as a result the bodies it contained began to decompose.
It’s very hot at the moment in Guayaquil, so the smells are so strong that the neighbors can’t stand them anymore. Drone footage showed morgue workers on security runs disinfecting a container and transporting what appear to be bodies in plastic bags. Images that we hoped we would no longer see in Guayaquil.
In the population of Guayaquil, there is indeed a lot of criticism, because it seems like negligence. This is what many NGOs such as the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights say. Many recall that Ecuador is the world’s leading exporter of bananas, that there are therefore a lot of refrigerated containers in the country’s ports and that it should be possible to recover some for the morgue.
And above all, it reminds us that violence still claims many victims in Ecuador, which is now one of the most violent countries on the continent with a homicide rate of 47 per 100,000 inhabitants. This affair in any case reminds us that the war against gangs is far from over, contradicting the government’s always optimistic messages.
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