Migrant disaster: Meet the person figuring out individuals who died attempting to achieve Europe

Pavlos Pavlidis leans again within the chair of his workplace, surveys a number of cardboard bins on his desk and takes a deep draw of one in all many cigarettes.

Pavlidis is a coroner on the hospital in Alexandroupolis, in northern Greece.

Since he began working right here in 2000, he is been finishing up post-mortems on migrants who’ve died attempting to get into Greece, after which making an attempt to determine them.

“The cause of death is normally obvious,” he tells me. “The problem is finding out who they actually were.”

Within minutes of assembly him, he is displaying me images for example the distinction between those that have died from drowning and hypothermia.

They are usually not for the squeamish, however he insists folks ought to perceive simply how harmful these crossings are.

“All these people – they were killed by migration,” he says.

He conducts a autopsy to ascertain the causes of dying (“it’s normally obvious,” he says, with a shrug) however Pavlidis additionally dutifully catalogues ways in which the sufferer is perhaps recognized.

Some carry passports, however these regularly disintegrate within the water, together with different paper paperwork.

All possessions are saved in sealed baggage

The clothes they had been sporting when discovered is photographed and so too are any tattoos or gadgets of jewelry.

Everything is saved in a bag, marked with a singular reference quantity that tracks their case, from the primary police report till finally, a headstone.

The our bodies are saved on the hospital, both in a particular space of the morgue or in refrigerated models which can be, incongruously, positioned on a service street outdoors the constructing.

The thought is to hope that somebody, someplace, will register a lacking particular person, get proven a photograph of clothes or jewelry and are available ahead to place a reputation to the physique.

The baggage of possessions are within the bins on Pavlidis’ desk, fastidiously sealed and saved for the day when a relative would possibly out of the blue seem.

Some are distinctive – a wood crucifix pendant taken from a person who drowned; a bracelet proclaiming, “I BELIEVE”; notes from family and friends.

There is a child’s dummy in a single bag.

Pavlos believes that, sometimes, a household will be reunited with the physique of the cherished one they misplaced, that he can ship closure: “An answer, even if it’s a bad answer,” as he calls it.

And then, as we discuss, two folks arrive outdoors his workplace – a Syrian household who now dwell in Germany.

A 12 months earlier than, their brother had tried to get into Greece from Turkey.

Those with him stated he reached dry land, however then thought he heard taking pictures, and jumped again into the water to cover.

The catastrophic drawback was that the person was sporting all of the clothes he might carry, and the water soaked them instantly. He drowned.

His sister contacted the Red Cross, who had already obtained images from Pavlidis.

And a type of images – of a particular zip-up jacket – regarded acquainted. It was her brother’s.

‘The physique is outdoors within the fridge’

They come and sit within the workplace.

Pavlidis, calmly and with little ceremony, confirms some particulars.

“The body is outside in the refrigerator”, he says.

He exhibits them a photograph. “Look at these shoes?”

“Yes, yes,” says his sister, by tears.

Another photograph, this time of the clothes. Another nod. More quiet sobbing. It’s clear that it is their relative, however they have to be positive.

So, the girl is advised to supply a DNA pattern – a swab taken from inside her cheek and some drops of blood from her finger.

It shall be in contrast with the DNA pattern taken from the physique.

But the method just isn’t fast. Pavlidis expects it to take a month.

The household, weary and glassy-eyed, had hoped for a solution inside a few days.

“It will be him – I am 99% sure,” says Pavlidis, after the relations have left.

On his cabinets are 24 lever-arch recordsdata – one for annually since he began conserving information again in 2000.

“My focus is on the relatives, on doing what is best for them,” he says.

“The relatives must know what happened. It is…”, he pauses, “ethical.”

‘The Mediterranean is turning into a mass grave’

Thousands have already died this 12 months crossing the Mediterranean to attempt to get to Europe.

“Europe has the highest number of dead and missing migrants in the world,” says Kathryne Bomberger, director-general of the International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP).

“The Mediterranean is becoming a mass grave on a scale that has not been seen in the world before.”

The ICMP has lengthy been on the forefront of utilizing DNA to attempt to monitor down lacking folks, pioneered following essentially the most appalling excesses of the Bosnian battle.

“We started using DNA because of Srebrenica,” she says.

Now, they pursue individuals who have gone lacking due to pure disasters, battle, trafficking, crime, human slavery or, in fact, migration.

They have helped to determine greater than 20,000 folks over time.

Sometimes, after a pure catastrophe, a authorities will do every part it may well to assist prepare identification.

But in relation to placing a reputation to migrants who’ve died whereas attempting to get into Europe, the help just isn’t there.

It is, says Bomberger, “an ad hoc” course of: “I’ll be honest with you, there is no mechanism. All the things we hoped would be put into place still don’t exist.

“Every time there’s a catastrophe just like the ship that went down off Greece, all of us scramble.”

‘We have a million ideas, but… it’s politics’

What she wants is structure and organisation, with the ability to share data and buy-in from governments.

“The DNA mechanisms and the information methods exist. We have one million concepts about how to make sure co-operation, however the governments must take duty…it is politics.”

So instead, like Pavlidis, she perseveres – working and waiting, helping and hoping.

An hour’s drive from Pavlidis’s busy hospital, and we’re standing in a cemetery on the finish of a dusty monitor on the outskirts of a distant Greek village.

The solar is setting, and the weeds are tall.

A praying mantis is idling on a leaf by my ft.

And throughout us are lots of of graves occupied by individuals who by no means noticed this place of their lives.

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Everyone buried right here was a migrant, who died whereas attempting to cross the close by border with Turkey and so attain the promised land of the European Union.

And nearly all of them are nameless, their graves marked solely by roughly-shaped stones coated in a rudimentary whitewash.

This is a cemetery of the unknown.

But every grave comes with a quantity, a narrative and a paper path.

Look into these numbers, and you could find out the place the physique was discovered, how the particular person died, whether or not they had any distinguishing options, what they had been sporting.

The clues which may simply result in a reputation showing on these clean headstones sometime.

At one finish of the cemetery, praying quietly, is Mehmet Serif Damadoglu.

For a long time, he was the Imam and he nonetheless lives right here, in Sidiro.

It was he who oversaw lots of of ceremonies on the native mosque, the place migrants’ our bodies had been wrapped, blessed after which taken for burial.

The small native cemeteries started filling up and the locals complained that they might don’t have any area left for their very own households, so Damadoglu helped to arrange this new burial floor outdoors the village.

It is used just for migrants’ graves and there are actually extra folks buried right here than there are residents dwelling within the village.

He is a person blessed with a straightforward smile and a permanent sense of religion on the earth.

“For us, all that matters is that they were fellow human beings, and therefore they deserve our respect. That’s all. No matter where they came from, they are human beings.

“Whoever comes in search of their relative, we all know that they lie there, in that cemetery. It is solely for them.

“The burial rituals we perform on them, there is no discrimination. All the rituals I performed for my father and my mother, the exact same rituals we perform for the migrants. They are neither inferior nor superior. We are equal.”

It’s an ideological place that has not all the time gone down properly.

He tells a rare story of holding a service for a younger man whose physique was badly decomposed.

The village opposed it, saying it was unsanitary and that, if it needed to happen in any respect, it ought to be rushed.

Damadoglu was firm: “I said to them – what if this was your son? Would you stop me?”

And then, on the day of the burial, the person’s sister arrived from Somalia.

The Imam advised her to not open the shroud, to recollect him as he was, however as an alternative she undid the stitches and hugged her brother’s stays. It was a second of closure – uncommon however valuable.

And that’s the hope that’s symbolised by this cemetery on a hill. Blank gravestones which can be ready for a reputation.