BELÉM, Brazil – The bodies of nine migrants found on an African boat off the north coast of Brazil’s Amazon region were buried Thursday in a solemn ceremony in the capital of Pará state, Belém.
Fishermen from the coast of Pará found the boat adrift on April 13, carrying the decomposing bodies. Brazilian authorities later said that documents found on the ship indicated that the victims were migrants from Mali and Mauritania and that the boat had departed from the latter country after January 17.
Brazil’s Federal Police later said the bodies were those of adults or teenagers whose exact age could not be determined. The agents found two documents – a Mauritanian identity card and a Mauritanian entry record that belonged to someone from Mali.
The deceased were buried in a secular ceremony organized by several groups involved in their recovery, such as the UN Refugee Agency, the Red Cross and the International Organization for Migration, as well as Brazilian police, navy and civil defense agencies.
Tropical rain fell as their coffins were lowered into graves excavated in the earth and those present watched in respectful silence.
The roughly 12-meter (39-foot) boat was carrying 25 raincoats and 27 cellphones, suggesting the original number of passengers was significantly higher. This also implies that people of other nationalities may have been among the deceased, local authorities said.
Brazil’s Federal Police said it was unlikely to extract any information from the phones due to the long oxidation time they were subjected to. The force also added that it found paper notes on the boat with telephone numbers for Mauritania, Mali and Congo. A type of stove and two containers that could have carried water or fuel were also among the remains.
It was a rustic blue and white fiberglass boat that, when found, had no engine, rudder or rudder. Its canoe shape is similar to that of Mauritanian fishing boats, often used by migrants fleeing West Africa and wanting to enter the European Union through the Spanish 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 were all carrying corpses, like the vessel found in Pará.
So far, none of the victims have been identified. Authorities said the way they were buried would allow for subsequent exhumations if the families of the deceased were located and wished to transfer the bodies back to their home countries.
Brazil’s criminology institute, in the capital Brasília, is carrying out forensic examinations of the remains, and the Federal Police say they are in contact with Interpol and foreign organizations to provide possible results.
This year, the number of people trying to cross the northwest coast of Africa into the EU has seen a 500% increase, with the majority coming from Mauritania, according to the Spanish Ministry of the Interior. But it is a dangerous route with strong winds from the Atlantic, and boats that stray off course can drift for months and be swept away to distant destinations, often leaving migrants to die from dehydration and malnutrition.
The reasons that lead people to opt for these boats are varied and interconnected: lack of jobs and prospects for a better life, impacts of climate change, growing insecurity and political instability, among others.
More than 14,000 African migrants arrived in the Canary Islands this year, according to the Spanish ministry. In February, the EU and Mauritania signed a €210 million ($225 million) deal aimed at cracking down on people smuggling and deterring migrant boats.
With the disappearance of hundreds of migrants from West Africa, families in Mauritania have created 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 died during the arduous crossing of the Atlantic, shortly after arriving on the Spanish island of El Hierro. He is still looking for another nephew, Kadija Saw, who left in January and is nowhere to be found. He follows Brazilian news closely.
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 is trying to convince young people not to emigrate by boat. He created a WhatsApp group to warn migrants about the dangers of sea travel and to share information with desperate family members, and has counted at least 1,500 people missing in the past six months in Mauritania, Mali and Senegal. Although the majority of migrants embarking for Europe are men, there are also a growing number of women boarding boats.
“I have their ID on my phone,” said Saw, who receives messages every day from families looking for their loved ones. Together with others, they organized trips to Morocco to see the inside of prisons and morgues. Moroccan authorities frequently 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 devastated. “Every day she buys credit to listen to our audios, she lives for this, she doesn’t eat, she’s thin, she only thinks about her son,” said Saw. And she is not alone.
“It’s very sad, half the villages are dancing because their children arrived (in Spain),” he said, “but the other half are crying because they lost their children in the ocean.”
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Carneiro reported from Rio de Janeiro. Associated Press writer Renata Brito contributed from New York.
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