The use of fire in achieving moral purity:
Hindus in India are cremated upon open grounds upon wooden pyres…The body is to be set alight only by the male child of the deceased, or the closest male relative. [Wikipedia]Thousands of alleged militants, human rights activists, and ordinary Sikhs in Punjab were summarily executed by security forces… Their bodies were then cremated to destroy the evidence… His investigation led him to enquire into the purchase of firewood by security forces. He found that thousands of so-called unidentified or unclaimed bodies were being secretly cremated by the police with this firewood. [Human Rights Watch]
Today’s WaPo:
But the detainees were moved elsewhere to similar CIA prisons, referred to as “black sites” in classified documents… The agency is working to establish procedures in the event a prisoner dies in custody. One proposal circulating among mid-level officers calls for rushing in a CIA pathologist to perform an autopsy and then quickly burning the body, according to two sources. [Washington Post]
