EDITORIAL - A chance to mourn

Although it’s no longer a holiday, cemeteries will continue to have visitors today, All Souls’ Day. But there are hundreds of dead people with no one mourning for them because their loved ones are unaware of the deaths.

With unclaimed corpses mainly from the drug war continuing to pile up in morgues and funeral parlors, the Quezon City Police District is launching this month a website for unclaimed bodies in the city. The website will include information on tattoos and other physical marks that may help people identify missing loved ones.

At least 75 bodies remain unclaimed in two funeral parlors in the city. Police said the dead are believed to be casualties in the war on drugs, killed either by cops or vigilantes.

The public safety website – the first of its kind in the country – will also include a list of wanted persons with pending arrest warrants as well as lists of missing persons, pets and valuables. Other police districts particularly in urban centers should set up similar websites.

Apart from websites, actual photos of unidentified fatalities can be reproduced and made available in police stations especially in underdeveloped communities in the provinces. Metro Manila draws migrant workers from the countryside, and many come from remote communities with no access to the Internet and no phone signal. The public safety website will be useless to residents in these communities.

Last month about 250 corpses that were found rotting in a funeral parlor in Quezon City were buried in mass graves without being identified, as officials worried about public health. Reports said most of the bodies were brought to the funeral parlor by police.

That’s a lot of people whose deaths will never be established by their loved ones. DNA tests are expensive, but police can help people identify missing relatives, by taking photos of every fatality and keeping each photo with relevant individual information on file. Every death by a deadly weapon requires a police investigation and an official report.

If cops are uninterested or too lazy or incompetent to conduct a probe, they should at least file photos taken at the crime scene together with accurate information about every fatality. People should be given a chance to know the fate that has befallen their loved ones, to know with certainty that it’s a time to mourn.