The remains of 65 victims of the Shining Path have been returned to their families 30 years after they were killed.
Men, women, and children who were killed by the Shining Path between 1989 and 1991 have finally been returned to their families for identification and burial. People came from 25 communities to Huamanga to bury their dead, whose bones and the clothes they died in were presented in small white coffins, just over a meter long, along with the few objects they had on them at the times of their deaths.
Relatives had traveled from their distant homes to identify the remains of their family members killed so many years before. The bodies had been hidden in clandestine graves until four years ago, when they were disinterred and the lengthy identification process began. Experts used DNA tests, dental records, and anthropological forensics to identify them. They had been killed by members of the Shining Path, as well as police and the military.
Prosecutor Carlos Américo Ramos Heredia presided over the handing over of the remains of the victims. The ceremony took three hours and was attended by around 200 relatives.
Adelina García, president of the Association of Families of Kidnapped, Arrested, and Disappeared of Peru, is the wife of a man who went missing in the Los Cabitos barracks in Ayacucho back in 1983. “It’s a satisfaction to give a Christian grave to loved ones after many years, others still have their hearts in pain for not finding them and not having accomplished that the guilty are punished,” she told Peruvian daily La República.
Ramos admitted that there was a long road ahead of them, saying that there were still a lot of makeshift graves to discover and that they needed more prosecutors specialized in human rights.
2,925 bodies were discovered from 2006 to July 2014, 1,689 of this number have been identified and 1,485 have been returned to their families. La República notes that these numbers are very small when compared to the number of people who are still missing. The 2003 Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that 15 thousand people disappeared in the years the Shining Path was active in Peru.
Thursday 30 October 2014
http://www.peruthisweek.com/news-shining-path-victims-remains-returned-30-years-after-their-deaths-104326
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