Zambian police found the bodies of 27 men in Ngwerere, a farming area on the outskirts of the capital Lusaka, on Sunday. After a preliminary investigation, authorities believe the victims are men between the ages of 20 and 38 who were dumped by unknown individuals along the road after dying of starvation and exhaustion.
Among the fatalities was a survivor with breathing difficulties, who was taken to a Lusaka hospital in the early hours of Sunday morning for treatment. The rest of the bodies were transported to the University Hospital morgue for proper identification and autopsies to determine the exact cause of death, according to police spokesman Danny Mwale.
Some local media, such as MDN News, have published images of the discovery on social networks. In them it is observed that some bodies were scattered along the road, while others were piled up.
“We believe these are Ethiopian nationals,” Danny Mwale said. Zambia is a common transit country for migrants traveling from Ethiopia to countries like South Africa via the southern route. Often these migrants, who move from one point to another irregularly and with the help of human traffickers, die on the way.
In mid-October, 29 bodies of Ethiopian migrants were found in a forest in Malawi, 25 of whom had been buried in a mass grave. And in March 2020, another 64 Ethiopians were found dead crammed inside a cargo container in Mozambique.
It is a problem that is repeated in the south of the African continent, but to which no one seems to find a solution. The authorities of the different countries involved intercept migrants on a daily basis, but many manage to cross the borders through human trafficking mafias. Many of them end up dead from traffic accidents, suffocation in poorly ventilated trucks, violence, or untreated illnesses along the route.
In addition, on many occasions the police fail to identify the fatalities and they remain missing indefinitely without being repatriated and without their families being able to recover the bodies to bury them.
In November, when the Ethiopian government and the Tigre People's Liberation Front reached a peace agreement, Dereje Feyissa, a researcher at the Ethiopian Center for Peace and Development, told La Vanguardia that he was hopeful that this would allow Ethiopia to reach agreements. agreements to control migration with South Africa. But the discovery of these 29 corpses indicates that we will have to continue waiting.
