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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

This Land is my Land! can you afford the death dues?

Scotland on Sunday June 10th 07, printed an article by Richard Ellas titled TOO POOR TO REST IN PEACE:
Exhumation, when it happens, is news on the television and press in this part of the world. It causes a lot of anguish for families concerned and usually a lot of legal work has taken place before an exhumation takes place. This article which is supported by pictures of council workers transporting corpses in wheel-barrows and rubbish trucks puts another meaning to being thrown on the scrapheap at the end of your working life. One thing for sure, it will not be members of the capitalist class who have to put up with this obscenity.
I quote
“Even in death the poor of Guatemala cannot be certain their bodies will attain eternal rest.
After six years in a tomb relatives have to pay a £12 fee to allow the remains to stay in place for four more years.
If, as is often the case in the poverty- stricken Central American country, relatives cannot afford the fee, council workers dig the body up and dump it down a deep shaft which doubles up as a communal grave.
The main cemetery In Guatemala City, like many others, is so crowded that the authorities have had to impose the tax in order to make room for new bodies.
This year alone, more than 2000 corpses have already been exhumed and deposited down the hole.
Even if the tax has been paid, the death dues are up for renewal four years later.”

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