BELEM, Brazil — The bodies of nine migrants found in an African boat off the northern coast of Brazil’s Amazon region were buried Thursday with a solemn ceremony in the Para state capital of Belem.
Fishermen off the coast of Para found the boat adrift on April 13, carrying the already decomposed bodies. Brazilian officials later said documents found on the boat showed the victims were migrants from Mali and Mauritania and that the boat had left the country after January 17.
The dead were buried in a secular ceremony organized by various groups involved in their recovery, including the UN Refugee Agency, the Red Cross and the International Organization for Migration, as well as Brazil’s police, navy and civil defense services.
A tropical rain fell as their coffins were lowered into graves dug in the earth and those present watched in respectful silence.
Their approximately 12-metre (39 ft) boat carried 25 waterproofs and 27 mobile phones, suggesting the original number of passengers was significantly higher. It also means people of other nationalities may have been among the dead, local officials said.
It was a rustic blue-and-white fiberglass boat that, when found, had no engine, no rudder, and no rudder. Its canoe shape is similar to the Moorish fishing boats often used by migrants leaving West Africa and aiming to enter the European Union via Spain’s Canary Islands.
An Associated Press investigation published last year revealed that in 2021 at least seven boats from northwest Africa were found in the Caribbean and Brazil. They all carried corpses, like the boat found in Para.
So far, none of the victims have been identified. Authorities said their burial method would allow for subsequent exhumations in case the families of the dead were located and wished to take the bodies back to their countries of origin.
The Brazilian Institute of Criminology in the capital Brasilia is conducting forensic tests on the remains, and the Federal Police say they are in contact with Interpol and foreign agencies to provide final results.
This year, the number of people attempting to cross from Africa’s northwest coast to the EU has increased by 500%, with the majority departing from Mauritania, according to Spain’s interior ministry. But it’s a dangerous route with strong Atlantic winds, and boats that drift off course can be stranded for months and drift to distant destinations, often leading migrants to die of dehydration and malnutrition.
The reasons that drive people to such vessels are varied and interrelated: lack of jobs and prospects for a better life, effects of climate change, increasing insecurity and political instability, among others.
More than 14,000 African migrants have arrived in the Canary Islands so far this year, according to the Spanish ministry. In February, the EU and Mauritania signed a 210 million euro ($225 million) deal aimed at cracking down on people smugglers and deterring migrant boats.
With hundreds more migrants from West Africa listed as missing, families in Mauritania have set up a committee to search for loved ones and are anxiously awaiting information from Brazil.
Bachirou Saw from Mauritania buried one of his nephews earlier this year, who had died during the arduous Atlantic crossing shortly after arriving on the Spanish island of El Hierro. She is still looking for another nephew, Kadija Saw, who left in January and is nowhere to be found. He closely follows the news from Brazil.
Saw, who also has Spanish citizenship and immigrated to Europe by plane 30 years ago when it was easier to get a visa, said he tries to convince young men not to immigrate by boat. He set up a WhatsApp group to alert migrants to the dangers of the ocean journey and share information with desperate relatives, and has counted at least 1,500 missing in the past six months from Mauritania, Mali and Senegal. While most of the migrants boarding in Europe are men, there are also a growing number of women boarding boats.
“I have their IDs on my phone,” said Shaw, who receives daily messages from families looking for their loved ones. Along with others, they have organized trips to Morocco to look inside prisons and morgues. Moroccan authorities often intercept migrants trying to reach Spain and detain them before deporting them. But Saw’s nephew wasn’t there either. He also visited the Canary Islands to check the morgues there.
Saw’s sister is deserted. “Every day she buys credit to listen to our audios, she lives for it, she doesn’t eat, she’s thin, she only thinks about her son,” Saw said. And she is not alone.
“It’s very sad, half the villages are dancing because their sons arrived (in Spain),” he said, “but the other half are crying because they lost their sons in the ocean.”
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Carneiro reported from Rio de Janeiro. Associated Press writer Renata Brito contributed from New York.