Police in northern Malawi are investigating the deaths of 25 male foreigners, believed to be Ethiopians, found buried in a mass grave in a forest in the Mzimba district.
Police say villagers discovered the month-old mass grave in the forest while hunting wild insects in the Mtangatanga Forest Reserve. The preliminary investigation on the deceased shows all of them are Ethiopian nationals.
"We found two temporary traveling documents that indicated names and nationalities of these people," said Peter Kalaya, spokesperson for Malawi Police Service. "Again, we found sim cards bearing the country Ethiopia. So having prior knowledge that most of the illegal migrants we intercept are from Ethiopia, give us a basis to conclude that these are Ethiopians."
Kalaya told VOA on Thursday that medical experts were still conducting autopsies on the bodies to establish the cause of death, and that arrangements are being made about where to rebury the bodies.
"At the moment we are strategizing because there is a procedure that has to be followed," he said. "These are foreign nationals and we will just follow those procedures that are available because the bodies are in a decomposed state. So we will see what to do after everything is done."
Police on Thursday found another grave containing four bodies in the forest reserve. The nationalities of the deceased from this grave were not immediately known.
Malawi is a transit route for foreigners, especially Ethiopians, who are trafficked through Malawi en route to South Africa. The foreigners mostly use uncharted routes and sometimes find refuge in the forest.
Police in Karonga district said Thursday they are interrogating 72 Ethiopians they arrested Wednesday after they were found loitering in the forest.
Police spokesman George Mulewa said the detained Ethiopians are being held on charges of illegal entry, adding that 10 Malawians have been charged with assisting them.
"As of now, we're trying to probe more from them so that we should know why they are coming in from their respective homes and at the same time hiding in the bush, which is a threat to us as Malawians as well as themselves because we have been hearing people are dying in the bushes," Mulewa said.
The governments of Malawi and Ethiopia, with support from the International Organization for Migration, have been repatriating Ethiopians arrested for illegal entry.
Pasqually Zulu, spokesperson for the Department of Immigration in Malawi, said, "The process is still ongoing. As of last week, we managed to repatriate another cohort of 22. And in total since August, we have managed to repatriate 198, all Ethiopians.''
Critics of the government blame the situation on Malawi's porous borders.
Zulu said the problem is that illegal immigrants are receiving aid from Malawians. He said fewer migrants will come if communities inform security agencies when they see suspicious movement of unknown people.
