Thailand: free cremation ceremony at temple for Covid-19 dead
Audio 02:29
A traditional Thai statue wears a face mask.
© Romeo GACAD / AFP
By: Carol Isoux
6 mins
Thailand, a country that was cited as an example until recently for its management of the Covid-19 crisis, is now struggling with the third wave that has overwhelmed it.
Nearly 10,000 cases and a hundred deaths per day.
As funeral services begin to be overcrowded, in Bangkok, a temple offers free cremation ceremonies for those who have died from the virus.
Publicity
The van is parked at the bottom of the steps of the small temple where the incinerator is located. The four volunteers, covered in plastic from head to toe, bow with clasped hands in a final salute, before grabbing the white coffin that contains the body of Madame Heng, 59, a street food vendor. in Bangkok for twenty years. At the request of his relatives, who did not have the means to offer him a dignified cremation, it is the Siam-Nonthaburi foundation which is responsible for the transfer of his body from the hospital to his final resting place. According to its director Pairat Sutthup for a few weeks, requests have exploded: “
It keeps increasing.
Normally, we are already under enough demand, because many families cannot afford a funeral service.
Let's say two or three deaths a day.
But there, since June, it is a minimum of 10 deaths per day that we must take care of.
"
There is no public service in Thailand that deals with the funerals of the needy dead.
This role is devolved to temples and Buddhist foundations.
Historically, in the Thai capital, it is the Chinese immigrant communities who have fulfilled this function, but today, beyond the lack of means of the families, it is also that many funeral services refuse to take care of the dead. of the Covid.
The abbot of the Rat Prakong Tham temple, on the outskirts of Bangkok, calls on Thai citizens for solidarity: “
From all over the region, in Bangkok, in the suburbs, families are calling our temple so that we can collect the bodies, transport them, with our own vehicles, our own teams, because they know that in this temple, we do not are not afraid. So, we appeal for donations to help us do this essential work, so that we can pay for labor, or at least gasoline.
"
Instead of the traditional funeral chants and incantations uttered by the monks, the cremations of these dead unlike any other take place in silence, at an accelerated pace.
Despite a now majority presence of the Delta variant among the new contaminations, the government hopes to avoid the Indian scenario thanks to semi-containment measures in urban centers while the country has just partially reopened its doors to vaccinated tourists.
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