Saturday 30 March 2013

The bones tell the story: The search for Peru's missing


In Peru last week, forensic anthropologists revealed that for the first time, they had confirmed the identities of three individuals who had been disappeared by government forces during that country's internal armed conflict. During the 1980s, hundreds of people were detained, brought to the Los Cabitos military base, brutally tortured, and were never seen or heard from again.

In 2009, forensic anthropologists searching for the disappeared in Los Cabitos had unearthed the remains of more than 100 people. Virtually all the remains show signs of torture and execution-style deaths. Until now, none of those bodies had been identified.

Using DNA matching between the recovered remains and samples from living relatives of the victims, the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team (EPAF) was able to determine that two of the bodies belonged to individuals who were reported by relatives to have gone missing in the Los Cabitos military base in 1984, and the third in 1985.

The Los Cabitos military base was the centre of counterinsurgency operations in Ayacucho, the birthplace of the Maoist Shining Path insurgency and the epicentre of the war between insurgents and government forces that took the lives of nearly 70,000 Peruvians. Of these, 15,000 were forcibly disappeared, mostly by government forces, with no trace of their bodies to date.

The identifications offer incontrovertible proof that the military systematically detained, tortured and executed hundreds of presumed "subversives" during Peru's "time of fear". To date, no one has been convicted of these crimes, despite the fact that they occurred 30 years ago.

Peru's Auschwitz

It was long rumoured that the Los Cabitos military base was used by government forces as a clandestine detention centre and that heinous acts of torture were visited upon the bodies of presumed subversives. In the early 1980s, at the start of the conflict, government forces had little understanding of the insurgency. Indigenous communities became seen as safe havens of terrorists, and indiscriminate massacres ensued in the military's effort to "kill the fish" by "draining the sea".

Forced disappearances also became a common government tactic. In the latter half of the 1980s, the United Nations said that government forces had disappeared more people in Peru than anywhere else on the planet. Women congregated outside the Los Cabitos military base day after day, seeking information about their missing husbands, fathers, children. Some say they saw their husbands inside the base, while others received missives from their detained sons, ferreted out by compassionate soldiers, under the noses of their superiors. In most cases, they never saw their loved ones again.

A book published in 2004 by Peruvian journalist Ricardo Uceda confirmed the rumours. A former intelligence officer, Jesús Sosa Saavedra, who went by the nickname "Kerosene", confessed to having been ordered by the then head of Los Cabitos, General Wilfredo Mori Orzo, to dig up the cadavers of detainees who had been murdered, and incinerate them. Four ovens were built, and Kerosene admits to having personally disposed of at least 300 bodies this way. He also admitted to having executed prisoners in 1983 in Los Cabitos.

Forensic anthropologists discovered four ovens with the charred remains of bodies inside, as well as pipes that were used to power the ovens. Based on the exhumations to date, they estimate that more than 1,000 bodies could be interred at Los Cabitos. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR), set up in 2001 to investigate the abuses of the past, documented the kidnapping, torture and/or execution [SP] of 138 people at Los Cabitos between 1983 and 1984. According to the CVR's Final Report, "It is evident that the high command of the [Los Cabitos] military installation had dominion over and control of the actions that occurred there that constitute human rights violations."

The military on trial

A legal case is currently underway in Peru focusing on crimes at Los Cabitos during 1983. Seven high ranking military officers, including the head of the armed forces that year, are charged with the murder, forced disappearance, and torture of 53 victims. An investigation is still underway involving the crimes that took place at Los Cabitos during 1984 and 1985. Gloria Cano, a seasoned human rights lawyer and director of the Pro Human Rights Association (Aprodeh), represents the victims in both cases.

I was in Peru last August and observed several court sessions. For a week, the court relocated to Ayacucho so as to facilitate the testimony of survivors and relatives of victims who could not make the long trip to Lima to testify. Several survivors told harrowing stories of being detained and submitted to various forms of torture.

One man stood up to show the court how his captors tied his arms behind his back, hung him from his wrists, and proceeded to kick and beat him. Another told the court that when he was in the torture chamber, he witnessed soldiers rape a young girl. After giving her testimony in Quechua, an elderly woman walked up to the judges, raised her hands to the sky, and implored them to help her find her missing son and to provide the economic reparations the government has promised victims but has only begun to deliver in recent years, in piecemeal fashion, decades after the conflict. Several witnesses described in heartbreaking detail their fruitless search for their relatives among the ravines and cliffs where dead bodies were being dumped, and were often consumed by wild pigs and other animals.

The trial for Los Cabitos 1983 started in May 2011 and is expected to end later this year. The slow pace is in part due to the fact that the mandate Special Criminal Court, which originally included cases of terrorism, crimes against humanity, and human rights violations, has expanded to include drug trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping, and most recently, social conflict. Judges have difficulty managing their case load and few courtrooms are available to hold trial, so hearings in cases like Los Cabitos take place only once every week or so, for only a few hours at a time. The glacial pace of the court system imposes new hardships on the victims, who have waited decades to know the truth about their loved ones and see justice done.

In addition, key information is missing about what happened at Los Cabitos military base. The prosecutor's office and human rights lawyers have sought access to military documents, but they are met with refusals to collaborate and claims that all documents pertaining to the period in question were destroyed in accordance with military regulations. Yet, in 2010, the Army published a book - its own version of the past, since it refuses to accept the truth commission's final report - that makes references to documents that might shed light on what happened at Los Cabitos and other military bases in Peru's war zones. To date, these documents have not been made accessible to investigators, so it has been impossible to reconstruct the chain of command or identify military personnel who worked inside the military base during those years.

The eternal anguish of the relatives of the disappeared

Less than one percent of Peru's 15,000 disappeared have been identified, according to José Pablo Baraybar, a forensic anthropologist who worked in the Balkans and is currently the director of EPAF. The CVR identified over 6,000 clandestine graves across the country, but overall few exhumations have been conducted. Baraybar says the problem is that the Peruvian state has failed to take seriously the CVR's recommendations to develop a national plan to search for the missing. This has a lot to do with the fact, he says, that the disappeared hail from Peru's rural, indigenous population, who have been historically excluded from political and economic life.

The identifications announced last week will surely inspire hope among the relatives of Peru's 15,000 disappeared that more of the missing can be identified, their bodies returned to their loved ones, and buried. This is a crucial step for relatives of the disappeared, who continue to live in a state of anguished uncertainty about the fate of their missing loved ones. When I visited Ayacucho again last November, I spoke with one woman who told me that she continues to search for her husband, who was kidnapped by government forces in the middle of the night in 1984. She thinks he is probably dead. But there are days when she is walking down the street and thinks she sees him. This is the anguish that forced disappearance imposes upon those who survive: an endless unknowing that perpetuates the suffering of the dead and the living alike.

Saturday 30 March 2013

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/2013330141926998582.html

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28 Dead in China Mine Gas Blast


Twenty-eight miners have been killed in a gas explosion at a coal mine in northeast China, state media have confirmed.

The accident at the Babao Coal Mine in the city of Baishan in Jilin province came on the same day as 83 miners were feared dead after a landslide near a mine in Tibet.

A further 13 workers were rescued after the incident at the colliery, which is owned by the state's Tonghua Mining (Group) Company, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

There is rising concern in China about the number of fatalities in mining accidents, as corrupt officials cut corners with safety measures in order to meet the insatiable demand for coal, making Chinese mines amongst the most dangerous in the world.

China is the world's largest consumer of coal, with the fossil fuel meeting up to 70 percent of the country's energy needs.

But its mines are among the deadliest in the world because of lax regulation, corruption and inefficiency. Accidents are common because safety is often neglected by bosses seeking quick profits.

Earlier this month 28 people were killed and 58 managed to escape to the surface after an explosion at the Machang coal mine in Guizhou Province, Xinhua reported.

An accident at a coal mine in southwest China killed 21 miners earlier this month, state media said. Xinhua said 58 had managed to get to the surface safely after the coal and gas outburst at the Machang coal mine in Guizhou Province.

An explosion at the Shangchang Coal Mine in the southwest Yunnan province left 17 people dead last December, while a month earlier, 23 people were killed in a gas explosion in a coal mine in Guizhou province, which borders Yunnan.

Last August, seven people died in a coal mine accident in the city of Jilin, which is located in China's northern industrial rustbelt.

The state administration of work safety said last year it would close more than 600 small coal mines, which are considered more dangerous than the larger mines.

Efforts to improve safety in China's coal mines have seen the numbers of accidents decrease in recent years.

The Chinese government last year closed down 600 of country's smaller and least safe mines. Official figures show a fall in the number of mining fatalities, with the 1,384 killed in 2012 down from 1,973 the year before.

However, many believe that the real death toll may be much higher, with managers often concealing fatalities and accidents in order to escape punishment and avoid being exposed as corrupt. The gains of a successful cover-up often outweigh the risks of a successful disaster response in China's authoritarian system, in which managers are rewarded for strictly adhering to centrally imposed targets.

But labour rights groups say the actual death toll is likely to be much higher, partly due to under-reporting of accidents as mine bosses seek to limit their economic losses and avoid punishment.

Zhang Dejiang, a leading Chinese politician who currently sits on the elite seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, previously said coal mine accidents "ring the alarm, warning us that accident prevention is a complex, difficult, and urgent task".

Saturday 30 March 2013

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/451887/20130330/china-mine-explosion-28-killed-blast.htm

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130329/china-mine-blast-kills-28-state-media-0

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First body reportedly found after China landslide buries 83


Rescue teams found the first body Saturday almost 36 hours after a giant landslide in Tibet buried 83 mine workers under two million cubic metres of earth, China's state media reported.

Xinhua news agency said rescuers "found the first body at 5.35 pm", after a huge section of land buried a copper mine workers' camp in Maizhokunggar county, east of the Tibetan capital Lhasa, at 6:00 am on Friday (2200 GMT Thursday).

The report came after officials said at a press conference at 10.O0 am Saturday that a massive search and rescue operation had failed to locate any survivors or bodies up to that point.

A rescue worker had also described the chance of survivors being found as "slim", Xinhua said, as teams using sniffer dogs and radar combed the mountainside in a hunt for survivors that was hampered by bad weather, altitude sickness and further landslides.

Potentially invaluable in the rescue, an excavator was broken in the landslide and has been pulled out of the debris, and rescuers were seen digging with their bare hands, as the narrow and damaged local roads had prevented much large-scale machinery from entering, said Xinhua reporters at the site.

Meanwhile, an emergency response team attempted to prevent a secondary disaster.

The Tibetan landslide came on the same day as a gas blast in a northeast China coal mine killed 28 people. State media said 13 others were rescued after the accident at Babao Coal Mine in the city of Baishan in Jilin province.

State-run China National Television (CNTV) said on its news website that "rescue workers have established three defensive lines" around the landslide disaster zone to prevent "secondary disasters", without giving details.

It also said that some of the 2,000-strong rescue team had set up temporary accommodation half-way up the mountain as a safety measure against further landslides. The disaster zone is located 4,600 metres (15,000 feet) above sea level.

The Xinhua report quoted a rescue worker saying there were cracks along nearby mountains, which indicated further landslides were possible.

It also said that rescuers had been suffering from slight altitude sickness and that "further minor landslides" had hampered their efforts.

"Temperatures as low as minus three degrees Celsius have also affected the sniffer dogs' senses of smell," the report added.

State broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) Saturday showed dozens of bulldozers shifting earth as others headed to the disaster area in Tibet.

The Tencent news website said 15 dog teams and 15 teams using radar monitoring equipment were accompanying 200 bulldozers and heavy lifting vehicles.

The victims of the disaster worked for a subsidiary of the China National Gold Group Corporation (CNGG), a state-owned company and the nation's biggest gold miner by output.

Almost all of them were Han Chinese, the national ethnic majority, with only two ethnic Tibetans, Xinhua said. Most were migrant workers from the provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan.

China's new president Xi Jinping, who is currently visiting the Republic of Congo in Africa, and new premier Li Keqiang had ordered "top efforts" to rescue the victims, Xinhua added.

Mountainous regions of Tibet are prone to landslides, which can be exacerbated by heavy mining activity.

In recent years China has discovered huge mineral resources in Tibet, including tens of millions of tonnes of copper, lead and zinc, and billions of tonnes of iron ore, according to state media reports.

CNGG could not be reached by AFP on Saturday. An official from Maizhokunggar county said all of her colleagues were at the scene, but could not be reached for updates.

More than 300,000 cubic metres of debris had been removed by noon Saturday, officials told Xinhua.

The affected area is 3 km wide and 30 meters deep in average, covered with about 2 million cubic meters of mud, rock and debris, a Xinhua reporter said from the disaster site.

Jiang said there were cracks along nearby mountains, which indicated a possibility of subsequent disasters. A team consisting of geological experts has been organized to monitor the geological situation.

Saturday 30 March 2013

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/1263175/1/.html

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Rescuers dig through rubble seeking missing in Tanzania building collapse


Rescuers planned to search for survivors under a mountain of concrete and twisted metal Friday night after a high-rise building collapsed in Tanzania.

At least four people were dead and 60 were missing after the 16-story building under construction collapsed in Tanzania’s largest city, government and emergency officials said.

Five children are believed to be among the missing, rescue official Walji Ali said.

The building collapsed Friday with a “huge whoosh and then thump,” said eyewitness Ali Jawad Bhimani, a hotel owner who lives near the building in Dar es Salaam’s normally bustling Kariakoo central business district.

“The fallen building is next to our mosque. There is a small field there where the young boys play football. The building fell right on top,” he said. “But 10 to 15 of the boys playing got away safely and are unharmed.”

A statement from the nearby mosque said that four of the boys believed to have been playing there were still missing.

Police and search dogs quickly flooded the scene, Bhimani said. By Friday evening, the dogs were gone, replaced by heavy equipment being used to remove debris, he said.

The Tanzanian Red Cross said rescue efforts would continue through the night. But the group also expressed relief that the casualty figures could have been far higher but the streets were relatively empty of vendors and shoppers due to a holiday.

“So far we have managed to rescue live at least 13 people and four dead bodies, two were seriously injured,” Stella Marealle from the Red Cross said.

In addition to the deaths, at least 17 people were injured, said Suleiman Kova, a regional police commander.

Construction workers were among those injured, Ali said.

Saturday 20 March 2013

http://wqad.com/2013/03/29/rescuers-dig-through-rubble-seeking-missing-in-tanzania-building-collapse/

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Military torture chamber near Matale mass grave


The survivors of a military-run detention centre that existed during the southern counter-insurgency campaign have alleged the army had operated a torture chamber in a government school in the vicinity of the mass grave of Matale in 1989-90, and that the skeletons of the mass grave belong to the victims of that torture chamber.

The shocking disclosures come in the wake of Carbon C 14 Dating findings that have revealed the skeletal remains of over 150 bodies, unearthed from the mass grave, were buried in the period of 1986-90. Pubudu Jayakody, Political Secretary of the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), who insisted the remains that were unearthed from the mass grave were of his former comrades of the JVP, said the inmates of the torture chamber, which was operated from Vijaya Vidyalaya in the 1989-90, would soon come out to narrate their ordeal in the torture chamber.

Concern for their security is keeping them away for the moment, he said.

"A torture chamber was operated by a unit of the Gajaba Regiment of the Army in the Vijaya Vidyalaya, which was located in the vicinity of the Matale Hospital," he said.

"There are survivors of that torture chamber. And some of them are active members of our party to date and they will soon come out to reveal their experiences in the camp," he said.

On Thursday, Jayakody lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka demanding an inquiry into the mass grave.

Two specialist reports, which were submitted to the Matale Magistrate, have revealed the skeletal remains belong to the period of the Southern uprising, during which the security forces and the State-backed death squads were accused of carrying out large-scale extra-judicial killings and mass disappearances.

A report of the Judicial Medical Officer of Matale, which was submitted to the Matale Magistrate early this week, has explained in gory detail the torture the victims had been subjected to.

The report detailed that heads had been severed from the bodies of the victims using an electric saw and some skulls bore evidence that nails had been inserted into the heads of the victims. The report has also revealed the skeletons bore marks of being attacked using blunt weapons and subjected to extreme torture.

Prof. Raj Somadeva, professor of forensic archaeology at the University of Kelaniya in an earlier report confirmed the grave cannot be older than 1986 and newer than 1990.

Prof. Somadeva was commissioned by the Magistrate to prepare a report on the mass grave.

Saturday 30 March 2013

http://www.ceylontoday.lk/27-28519-news-detail-military-torture-chamber-near-matale-mass-grave.html

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