The Importance Of Burying Your Deceased Loved Ones/ A Horrifying Exchange

In Athens, there's a DNA register of migrants and refugees that have died when their boats capsized. Police chiefs in charge of the registry want people who suspect that their relatives may have drowned, to get in touch with them.
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In Athens, there's a DNA register of migrants and refugees that have died when their boats capsized. Police chiefs in charge of the registry want people who suspect that their relatives may have drowned, to get in touch with them.

In November last year, I received a call from Zakay Challma, a Syriac-Orthodox monk who lives in Greece. He sounded panicked and asked me to convey to the media that the waves were too high, that it was winter and that no one should take the boats from Turkey to Greece. He was on the island of Rhodes to officiate the funeral of a few Assyrians/ Syriacs from Syria, who had drowned. He also asked me to call a man whose wife and two daughters also had drowned. The man, let's call him Ayman, is hidden in the Stockholm area, he is a so-called "Dublin-job". On the way here, he was arrested in Italy, and was forced to give his fingerprints. Sweden will therefore not be responsible for him, and he will be deported to Italy.

I called Ayman and expressed my condolences and asked if he wanted help from the monk. He was surprised and wondered who had died. No one had told him about his family's tragic death. It was a horrifying call.

In April this year we in A Demand For Action (ADFA), the human rights organization that I am the chairman of, went to Rhodes to look for his family. We made a formal complaint about the missing persons and attached the DNA test from Sweden that we had helped Ayman with. A few days later we learned that his DNA did not match with those in the register in Athens. Around the same time, we published the story of Ayman on ADFA's social media pages, two witnesses came forward and said that they had been on the same boat that his family died in.

On May 25th, I managed to get in contact with the police chief Penelope Miniati who is responsible for the register.

"If you're looking for a family member you have to make a formal complaint about the missing person at a police department here in Greece or at one of our missions abroad. A DNA test must also be attached to the complaint," Miniati explained.

On October 29, 2015 a boat sank off the island of Kalymnos in Greece. It had 160 people on board. 139 were rescued by the coast guard, 19 were found drowned and two were missing. The authorities took DNA tests from all who claimed that either one of those who had drowned or who were missing were their relatives. Thanks to their work all 19 that were found drowned were identified and returned to their families for burial.

Since January 2015, over 4400 migrants and refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean. Of those, about one-tenth drowned outside Greece.

On December 7, the body of a baby was found off the island of Kos. It was taken to the morgue in Rhodes. A DNA test of the body was sent to the registry in Athens. A woman had submitted her DNA to the register as early as July 2015. After the boat trip, she could not find her baby who was only a few months old. Their DNA matched. Now the mother could get some sort of peace in her sorrow.

On January 16 this year a new DNA test arrived in Athens. This time a drowned child was found off the island of Samos. The body was badly battered. A man had submitted his DNA because his 8-year-old daughter was missing. It was his daughter.

Ayman, who is now hiding in Sweden, says he will not find peace until his wife and two daughters have been found, and he can bury them.

"Our hope is obviously that Ayman will find his wife and daughters alive but it unfortunately seems to be so, that they have died. Now we have his DNA and should his daughters float up, he will be contacted," Miniati said.

Translated from Swedish by Daniela Babylonia Barhanna

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