Arrested: Volunteers Who Bury the Dead

Twenty-six members of “The Group that Buries the Dead”
pose for a picture prior to the arrest of seven of the group’s members on June 14.

By MIN LWIN
The Irrawaddy News

Seven Burmese civilian volunteer aid workers, members of a team known as “The Group that Buries the Dead,” were arrested on June 14, following their efforts to bury victims of Cyclone Nargis.

Among those arrested are Lin Htet Naing, Hnin Pwint Wei, Hein Yazar Tun and Aung Kyaw San, the group’s leader, according to Tun Myint Aung, a member of the 88 Generation Students Group. Three unidentified volunteers in the group were also arrested.

Aung Kyaw San, the chief editor of the Myanmar Tribune weekly journal, and his volunteer team of several dozen people undertook the grim task of removing some of the many corpses that still lie in the rivers and fields throughout the Irrawaddy delta.

The bodies, which had badly decomposed since the cyclone struck on May 2-3, were given simple cremation or burial rites.

“They worked to clean up the bodies around Bogalay,” an aid worker close to the group told The Irrawaddy on Thursday. "The authorities have not done much about the corpses. They volunteered to do the government's job on their own.”

Bogalay Township, one of hardest-hit areas, had tens of thousands of corpses littering the rivers, streams and fields, according to the volunteer aid worker.

“When they returned from Bogalay to Rangoon on June 14 their vehicle was stopped at a checkpoint in Pyapon Township,” he said. “They looked at their identity cards and arrested them.”

Two of those arrested, Lin Htet Naing and Hnin Pwint Wei, are leading members of the All Burma Federation of Students’ Unions. They went into hiding last year when Burma’s military government started its crackdown on monks and political activists following the civil demonstrations in September.