Saturday 8 September 2012

Argentina torture victim identified as Chilean

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA -- Forensic scientists have finally identified a mutilated corpse that washed up on the shore in 1976 as that of a Chilean leftist who was among the first victims of the Argentine dictatorship.

The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team used genetic evidence and fingerprints taken by Uruguay's military government at the time to identify the body as Luis Guillermo Vega Ceballos, an activist with Chile's Revolutionary Workers Party.

Vega Ceballos had been detained in Buenos Aires on April 9, 1976, along with his pregnant Argentine wife Laura Gladis Romero, whose body has never been found. The human rights group Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo believes she was among hundreds of dissidents killed after giving birth in captivity, and whose babies were raised by military or police families. The child would be turning 36 years old this month.

The discovery was announced Thursday night in Uruguay, where Peace Commission Secretary Graciela Jorge said "it closes a small chapter" in the history of the dirty wars that right-wing militaries fought against leftist revolutionaries in the 1970s.

Vega Ceballos' corpse showed clear signs of torture when it washed up on the coast of neighboring Uruguay, which also was ruled by a dictatorship, from 1973-1985. He had been mutilated and his hands were tied. Still, Uruguayan authorities followed their laws and took fingerprints that eventually enabled forensic scientists to identify the body.

In all, eight bodies that had washed up on the coast and been buried in a cemetery in Colonia, Uruguay were sent this year to the forensics team in Argentina. Of them, three others have been identified: Argentines Horacio Adolfo Abeledo and Roque Montenegro, and Uruguayan Alberto Mechoso Mendez, she said.

Abeledo was a 22-year-old salesman who was detained on July 21, 1976, according to Argentina's official registry of the disappeared. Montenegro disappeared along with his wife, Hilda Torres Montenegro, six weeks before Argentina's March 24 coup.

Their daughter, Victoria Montenegro, learned in May that her birth father had been identified. She recovered her true identity in 2000 with the help of the Grandmothers, and it was her blood that provided the match to her father's remains.

"No word exists to describe my feelings," she wrote in an open letter months ago. She described "the sadness of knowing my father's final destiny," along with "this feeling of peace that only comes with the truth."

She thanked the rights activists and forensics team for enabling her to recover her father's dignity, "so that he would no longer be an unknown body in a grave on the coast of Uruguay," and pleaded with other relatives of the disappeared to donate their blood to Argentina's genetic database.

"It makes us better, as Argentines, each time we can identify them and sing more strongly, 'we have not been beaten'," she wrote.

Rights activists suspect the victims were thrown from Argentine military planes into the wide Rio de la Plata that separates Uruguay and Argentina. Witnesses in Argentina have described torture victims being drugged and flown alive into the sea on the so-called "death flights."

Alberto Breccia, secretary to Uruguayan President Jose Mujica, said the identifications disprove critics who complain of misspent efforts to identify dirty war victims. He said Uruguay's program includes 35 people whose work includes unearthing cadavers, updating archives and adding to a database that now includes genetic information from 85 percent of the families of Uruguay's disappeared.

Saturday 8 September 2012

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/09/07/3802021/argentina-torture-victim-identified.html#storylink=cpy

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10 miners die in latest China coal mine accident Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/09/08/3803259/10-miners-die-in-latest-china.html#storylink=cpy

BEIJING -- Ten miners have died after a platform overturned in a coal mine in northwest China.

China's official Xinhua News Agency says the accident happened Thursday night in Gansu province in a mine that was under construction.

Xinhua says the last body was pulled from the mine Saturday morning. It says the miners were plunged into water when the platform overturned. No other details were given.

China has the world's deadliest coal mine industry. Safety improvements have reduced deaths in recent years, but safety rules are often ignored and accidents are still common.

Saturday 8 September 2012

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/09/08/3803259/10-miners-die-in-latest-china.html#storylink=cpy

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China earthquake death toll rises in Yunnan and Guizhou

At least 80 people are now known to have died in a series of earthquakes in south-western China, as rescuers struggle to reach remote areas.

More than 730 people were injured after the quakes hit Yunnan and Guizhou provinces on Friday, state media say.

The tremors struck mostly mountainous areas, causing landslides that blocked some roads.

The US Geological Survey registered the two strongest of the quakes at 5.6 magnitude.

Premier Wen Jiabao is expected to arrive in the area shortly.

China's Xinhua news agency quoted officials in Yunnan as saying 6,650 houses had been destroyed in the province and 430,000 others damaged.

More than 100,000 people have already been evacuated, said Xinhua, and the Red Cross has sent 650 tents and 3,000 quilts to the region.

The authorities have deployed the army to assist rescue teams in the rough terrain.

"Roads are blocked and rescuers have to climb the mountains to reach hard-hit villages," Li Fuchun, head of Yunnan's Luozehe town, was quoted as saying.

Mobile and regular phone service in the area was experiencing disruption, according to reports.

Most of the deaths were in Yunnan's Yiliang county, said officials.

Television footage from state-run broadcaster CCTV showed hundreds of local residents gathering on streets littered with bricks and rocks.

Users of the Twitter-like wesbite Weibo reported people rushing out of shaking office buildings, and photos posted online also showed streets strewn with rubble.

Aid agencies said they were concerned about the plight of children in the two provinces following the quakes.

"We are especially worried about those who may have been separated from their parents, as more aftershocks are expected to hit the area," Save the Children in China Country Director Pia MacRae said.

The largest of the quakes was also felt in the neighbouring province of Sichuan, where a 7.8 magnitude quake in 2008 left tens of thousands dead.

Saturday 8 September 2012

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-19527695

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