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Cremations Protested As Liberia’s Ebola Turmoil Escalates -Gov’t Also Announces Plan to Confiscate Private Land for Burials
Dr. Jerome R. Corsi / WND
NEW YORK – Civil leaders in Liberia are protesting a presidential order to cremate people who die from the Ebola virus, saying it violates culture and tradition.
Protests have stepped up as the Liberian government also has moved to restrict public gatherings, cancel midterm senatorial elections and confiscate private property to create government-run public cemeteries.
The actions are based on powers President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf invoked in August to combat the Ebola outbreak surging across West Africa.
Sirleaf’s order has resulted in the cremation of more than 1,000 Liberians from Monsterrado County alone, the region producing the bulk of the Ebola fatalities, according newspaper reports in the Liberian capital, Monrovia.
At a consultative meeting called by the Ministry of Internal Affairs — with support from the Carter Center in Liberia, an institute in Atlanta, Georgia, established in partnership with Emory University by former President Jimmy Carter to promote peace and fight disease — Zanzar Kawar, the head of the Liberian councils of chiefs and elders, argued that according to Liberian culture and tradition, it is abominable for a human corpse to be burned.
Internal Affairs Minister Morris Dukuly, speaking at the conference, countered that cremation of the Ebola-infected dead is a critical step that must be taken if the epidemic is to be contained. Traditional Liberian burial practices include washing and touching the dead at a time when the Ebola-infected corpses remain highly contagious.
Addressing the assembly via teleconference, Siatta Bishop, the chairwoman of the government’s burial management team, explained cremation of the Ebola-infected dead will be especially important in the coming rainy season. At that time, the water table is expected to be high, and the virus in bodies exposed by the rain could spread.
Read more at WND:
http://www.wnd.com/2014/10/cremations-protested-as-liberias-ebola-turmoil-escalates/
