This information comes from a
Reuters story I posted yesterday. I found it on Reuters Altertnet UK. Similar stories from the evacuees of the Superdome and the Convention Center -- and occasionally from angry Guardsmen or cops -- have appeared in the UK's
Independent and
Observer newspapers but I've yet to see it in the US press. There have been scattered stories of what happened inside these shelters, but these stories are more detailed, more horrifying, and come from the mouths of many more people -- on the record.
The Reuters story reports of
100 dead bodies in the Superdome and
22 bodies of adults and children stored inside the building -- "but troops guarding the building refused to confirm that and threatened to beat reporters seeking access to the makeshift morgue." All stories report a culture of rape unabated, an absence of law enforcement to protect the people from it. All stories report chaos and willful neglect -- and murder -- at the hands of the insufficient number of people tasked with keeping order.
These are the stories we should be hearing right now and seeing on the front pages of our papers.
This must be known in America -- these people's stories must be told. They do not only evidence the true consequences of the government's mercenary and brutal abandonment of its own citizens, but speak furiously to confirm what the parish presidents, city officials, and state leaders of Louisiana are saying: that they were forsaken, their people were left to die.
Newspapers in Qatar and India have picked up the Reuters story; Australia has heard these stories, as has New Zealand.
When will we hear them? And will we hear about those 100 people no less a symbol of the American law-and-order mythology than a police officer claims died inside the Superdome? Will we hear about the raped and murdered children that the UK already knows about? Or will it all drown in whitewash?
I urge everyone to read these articles and pass them along. Let's get them into the American press before all those bodies and stories vanish.
[Update] The Reuters story is now in Vietnamese papers as well.