It wasn’t safe and, according to custom, it wasn’t supposed to be a woman’s job. But Dahia Salih was determined to go anyway.
Sporadic gunshots could still be heard and looters continued to pillage abandoned homes when her family received a phone call to say that the body of her half-brother, Sebit, had finally been recovered. Yet unless a relative picked up Sebit’s corpse, he would be buried in a communal grave with dozens of others who had died in the Jebel area, the epicentre of recent fighting between government and opposition forces in South Sudan’s capital, Juba.
“He is my brother,” Dahia said. “I have to bury him.” Fearing that her male relatives would be a likelier target for marauding soldiers and looters, she decided to take responsibility for the burial.
In times of peace, funerals in South Sudan follow specific and lengthy rituals that often vary across ethnic groups, gender, age and even causes of death. But in the aftermath of the most recent clashes, which echoed the beginning of the conflict in 2013, few families were able to collect the bodies of loved ones and observe these customs.
In the days following the violence, aid workers and volunteers from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the South Sudan Red Cross stepped in to collect hundreds of bodies of soldiers and civilians that had been left in the streets.
The vast majority of the victims couldn’t be identified. “By the time it was safe enough for our teams to start collecting human remains, precious time had passed. Bodies change shape quickly in this climate. At this stage, it is no longer possible to identify a person through facial recognition,” said Gregor Mueller, deputy head of the ICRC’s delegation in South Sudan. “But we feel that we owe it to the dead, to their families … to ensure that they are collected and buried in a dignified way.”
In an effort to – one day – give families the chance to find the remains of missing relatives, the ICRC has been recording the circumstances of their deaths and the GPS coordinates of the site where each body was found and buried.
The traditions of Sebit’s Bari tribe dictate that dead bodies are washed, dressed in white and buried the same day. Male relatives must dig a deep grave and place the body sideways in an even deeper, narrow slit at the bottom. Some Bari say that if anyone is accused of having killed the deceased, that person must either be held accountable, or swear their innocence by drinking water mixed with a pinch of the soil dug up from the deepest part of the grave.
But none of these rituals were observed following Sebit’s death. He was buried more than a week after he had been killed. Neighbours helped Dahia bury the body in a hastily dug and relatively shallow grave, which already contained the remains of another brother and an uncle who had been killed in the violence and buried two days earlier.
Still, this was more than many other families managed. Just a couple of kilometres down the road, dozens of unidentified bodies wrapped in body bags were lowered into a mass grave. “Civilian, Male, Checkpoint #24, 08/07/2016” was scribbled on one bag. “Civilian, Male, Eye Radio, 08/07/2016,” on another.
Aid workers arranged the bodies next to one another. They noted GPS coordinates of the burial site, which could later be passed on to relatives who wished to mourn at the site or exhume remains.
The body of journalist John Gatluak was placed in an adjacent grave. A Nuer, he was reportedly shot dead by soldiers in what many called an ethnically motivated killing. His family and friends, some abroad and some in hiding, were unable to take custody of the body.
“If the situation becomes normal, maybe the family will take the body up to our village,” said Chuol Deng, a friend and colleague from the same Nuer community in Leer town. “John was a very important person. For someone like that, people usually build a large tomb near the family home.”
In both Bari and Nuer tradition, justice for those killed is an important part of burial rites, with elders often negotiating a settlement for the family of the victim. But few thought those responsible for the deaths of their loved ones would be held accountable.
As Dahia buried the last of her three relatives killed in the violence, she found comfort in the idea that the family had at least taken possession of the remains. “I wouldn’t be comfortable knowing he was buried in that big grave together with the others,” she said.
She planted a wooden pole in lieu of a cross and lined the edges of the grave with grass and pink flowers. She hoped that one day, when things were more stable and the family had saved up some money, they could hold a proper funeral service.
