LUSAKA, Dec 11 (Reuters) – Zambian police on Sunday found the bodies of 27 men, believed to be migrants from Ethiopia, dumped in a farming area on the outskirts of the capital after they died from suspected hunger and exhaustion, authorities said.
A sole survivor was found alive in the early hours of Sunday morning and rushed to a Lusaka hospital for treatment, while the dead were transported to the mortuary for identification and post mortems to determine the exact cause of death, police said.
Preliminary police investigations showed the victims were all males aged between 20 and 38 and had been dumped along a road by unknown people.
“Police and other security wings have since instituted investigations into the matter,” Danny Mwale, police spokesman, said in a statement after police were alerted to the gruesome scene by members of the public.
Ethiopian migrants often use Zambia when travelling to countries such as South Africa, though reports of deaths in transit there are rare.
I remember seeing a public message on TV when I was at a large city to attend a trade show back in the late 1970’s that went like ‘Parents! Do you know where your children are now?’ But most or all of these victims might have told their parents their decision to travel to a ‘Promised Land’ where milk and honey flow like a river on a rainy day and they will be sending them money as soon as they arrive in less than a month. Now I don’t wanna be the one who will tell that worried mother that her son is one of these victims whose dead bodies were throwing out of a moving truck like trash. Woe! Woe! Woe!!!