Thailand Identifies 3% Of Tourists Dead In Tsunami

[george]

Thailand Identifies 3% of Tourists Dead in Tsunami

BANGKOK: -- The Thai Tsunami Victim Identification Information Management Centre said it identified 3 percent of the bodies of overseas tourists killed by the Dec. 26 tsunami in Thailand, more than a month after the disaster killed about 5,300 people in the country, half of them foreigners.

The center, which was set up with the help of overseas governments, Interpol and the Thai police identified the bodies of 46 overseas tourists as of Saturday from a total of 1,572 which have been autopsied. The identification can be completed only after the center matches data such as DNA, fingerprints or other evidence about the body before the person died. As of Saturday, the center had data on 1,477 bodies.

``No one wants to run the risk of a mistaken identity like sending a wrong body to a wrong country,'' Reynald Doiron, the spokesman for the center said in an interview in Phuket. ``It would cast a doubt over the whole process of identification and then criticism will be totally justified.''

Doiron gave the example of finding a Caucasian woman's body in the worst affected Phangnga province with Canadian identification papers in her pocket. When Canadian authorities went to the woman's home they found her alive. The woman had lost her papers in Thailand a year ago.

``No one will ever find out how that happened,'' Doiron said. This explains why the identification process is taking such a long time, he said.

Burying Victims

The tsunami was unleashed by a magnitude-9 earthquake off the coast of Indonesia, killing more than 280,000 people and leaving 5 million homeless in 12 countries. Indonesia's toll of dead and missing rose to 232,937 by Jan. 29.

Sweden earlier this month asked Thailand about reports that mass graves are being used for tsunami victims, Agence France- Presse reported, citing Anders Ericsson, a Swedish Foreign Ministry official in Thailand. Germany and the Netherlands have also asked about such graves, AFP said.

Thailand appealed for international assistance on forensic technology to identify decomposed bodies.

Thailand temporarily buried overseas tourists killed in the tsunami in wooden coffins, Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai said, denying that the government was putting foreign corpses in mass graves.

``The identification process may take some time,'' said Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman Sihasak Phuangketkeow, without giving a time frame.

The identification center was set up on Dec. 30 Australian police and is based in TOT Corp.'s office in Phuket. TOT is Thailand's biggest fixed-line phone operator. Forensic experts and data entry operators from as many as 30 countries are working in the center.

Sending Samples

The center is using a software called Mass Fatality Identification System developed by a Michigan-based company named Gene Codes Corp., which wrote the software to identify bodies after the Sept. 11 attacks, to match DNAs of foreigners in Phuket.

``They are making identifications every day,'' said Kevin Miller, a forensic expert at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, stationed in Phuket for a month.

Thailand has been sending samples from bodies to China for DNA testing. Laboratories and other testing facilities in Thailand lack the capacity to conduct DNA tests on a high number of bodies, Vichai Tienthavorn, the health ministry's permanent secretary, said in an interview with Business Radio Jan. 11. Results from tests done in China will be available within days, he said.

Thailand has exhumed the bodies of people killed by the tsunami in order to implant chips containing information about their DNA, Justice Minister Pongthep Thepkanjana said earlier this month.

--Bloomberg 2005-01-31