62 Guerrero graves yield 131 bodies

The investigation into the disappearance of 43 students from the teacher training college in Ayotzinapa has uncovered more than 100 corpses buried in unmarked graves in Guerrero – but none of them corresponds to the students, missing since September 26 last year.

The Attorney General’s office (PGR) has exhumed 131 bodies from 62 sites, analyzing the remains and genetically cross-referencing them with family members of the missing students.

But none has tested positive. The investigation of the graves began last October after the Union of the Peoples and Organizations of Guerrero (UPOEG) alerted the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC) to their presence.

Since then bodies have been found in unmarked graves across Iguala every month, some of them mass graves containing more than a single corpse.

Many have been found by UPOEG volunteers who went out searching for possible grave sites based on information gathered from local residents.

The bodies unearthed in Iguala are among 321 found in 158 graves across the country since 2012, most of them in the states of Guerrero, Jalisco, Michoacán and Morelos.

The Iguala finds probably represent the worst case of clandestine graves uncovered in Mexico since the AIC found 75 bodies in La Barca, Jalisco, between November 2013 and February 2014.

The agency was investigating the disappearance of two of its agents, René Rojas Márquez and Gabriel Quijados Santiago, whose remains were discovered in Vista Hermosa, Michoacán.

The two are believed to have been murdered by members of the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel.

Tuesday 29 September 2015¨

http://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/62-guerrero-graves-yield-131-bodies/

continue reading

It never happened: How to deny genocide in the face of science

Scientific advances in DNA identification over the past 15 years have helped war-crimes investigators document to an unprecedented extent the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys around this town in 1995.

Yet even as these technological advances uncovered more damning evidence, many Bosnian Serbs have grown increasingly more resolute in their denial.

Last Friday night, two Bosnian Serb men standing beside a memorial to Serb war dead were a telling example. They insisted that Serbs are the victims of an international plot. They fervently argued — despite 93 mass-grave exhumations and 6,827 DNA identifications of the dead — that the mass killings have been grossly exaggerated.

Biased historical narratives, of course, have existed throughout history. The identification of the dead in Srebrenica demonstrates the ability of technological advances to produce a flood of factual information. Yet in many cases, the scientific statistics appear to have only given those willing to manipulate the numbers more arrows in their quiver.

The two Bosnian Serbs contended that roughly the same number of victims died on each side during the 1992-1995 war. When I asked how such a vast subterfuge had been carried out, one said the answer was simple. “As far as the Muslim side,” he told me, “there is a bigger lobby in America.”

The following morning, interviews with a dozen other Bosnian Serbs living near Srebrenica produced similar answers. As tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims drove past their homes to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the mass killings, Serbs dismissed the gathering and the idea of 8,000 dead as a “farce,” a “circus” and “make believe.”

“It’s definitely not correct,” said Budimir Todorovic, a 60-year-old electrician, as he calmly drank coffee with his family in his front yard as busloads of Bosnian Muslims drove by. “It’s not 8,000.”

Milan Rakic, a 48-year-old store owner, accused Muslims of stealing the bodies of Orthodox Christian Serbs and interring them in the town’s sprawling cemetery complex.

“There are a lot of Serb bodies buried in this memorial,” he said.

One elderly widow said that some Bosnian Muslims listed as dead in the Srebrenica memorial were, in fact, living in Germany. “The number is exaggerated,” she said. “There are many living people whose names are engraved on the gravesites.”

The woman, like the other Serbs interviewed, was genial and polite. The Serbs expressed regret about the war — the woman declared it “horrible, horrible.” But they echoed the arguments of Bosnian Serb nationalists who still dominate politics here. The nationalists contend that foreign powers, primarily the United States and Britain, stage-managed everything from the war itself to the burial of bodies in Srebrenica.

They dismissed the annual commemoration as a “provocation” also organized by meddling outsiders. They said the crowds were so large because “Western NGOs” paid people to attend.

“Everything is well coordinated,” one man standing at the memorial for Serb war dead told me. “No one from here is guilty for what happened.”

Denial is evident outside Bosnia as well. Disparate groups, including left-leaning academics, Russian government-controlled media and some right-wing Americans who talk about a Muslim takeover, scoff at the number of 8,000 dead.

In fact, the annual commemoration and cemetery here have become a global symbol of the international community’s failure to stop the killing in Bosnia. U.N. officials arrived in Srebrenica in 1993 and declared it a United Nations protected “safe area.” When Serb forces attacked it two years later, Dutch peacekeepers and U.N. commanders did little to defend the enclave, and it fell to Serb forces on July 11, 1995. Two weeks of mass expulsions and mass executions followed.

Twenty years later, an estimated 50,000 Bosnians and several thousand foreigners attended the anniversary commemoration last weekend. Dozens of foreign dignitaries did as well, with former President Bill Clinton saying the world must prevent more such killings.

In the largest DNA identification project ever, a nonprofit group called the International Commission on Missing Persons has collected 22,268 blood samples from Srebrenica survivors and matched them to 6,827 bodies.

“Huge advances in DNA identification have made it possible,” said Kathryne Bomberger, director of the project. “The science is moving rapidly.”

Along with 93 mass graves that have been exhumed, investigators have found bodies at 314 “surface sites” in the surrounding mountains. Yet the work is not over. With 8,000 men reported missing from Srebrenica and the nearby town of Zepa, another 1,200 bodies are believed to be scattered in the woods or in mass graves not yet located.

Finding the dead has been vastly complicated by a grisly Bosnian Serb effort to conceal evidence. Several months after the executions, Bosnian Serb forces dug up many of the mass graves and reburied the bodies in dozens of locations. In the process, many corpses were dismembered.

Body parts from single victims have been found at multiple sites. In one case, parts of the body of one victim, 23-year-old Kadrija Music, were discovered in five different mass graves 20 miles apart.

While the DNA identification of the bodies has received widespread praise, the uneven sentencing practices of the U.N.-created International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has elicited scorn from both Muslims and Serbs.

Bosnian Muslims hailed decisions from the tribunal, as well as the United Nations International Court of Justice, that ruled genocide had occurred in Srebrenica. But they criticized some of the sentences as far too short.

Meanwhile, Serbs insist they have been the victims of the court. They assailed the tribunal for ultimately acquitting Naser Oric, commander of Bosnian Muslim forces in Srebrenica, though they say he is responsible for many deaths

“How many Serbs need to be killed for people in the world to see that Serbs are people, not animals?” asked Rakic, the store owner, who said his uncle was one of Oric’s victims. “Animals have rights but not the Serb people?”

International war-crimes investigators, however, say there is no proportionality in the deaths in Srebrenica or Bosnia as a whole. The say several hundred Serbs died in the fighting around Srebrenica, but the vast majority of them were Serb military forces.

Across the country, Bosnian Muslims made up 65 percent of the war dead and Serbs 23 percent, according to prosecutors. Yet Bosnian Muslims made up 44 percent of the population, according to a census conducted two years before the war. Serbs made up 31 percent.

Meanwhile, Bosnian Serb news accounts lay out a different narrative. They report that 1,300 Serb civilians died around Srebrenica, and a total of 3,267 Serbs were “murdered” across eastern Bosnia.

Dismissing the Bosnian Serbs’ statements as irrelevant conspiracy theories would be easy. But their assertions had an eerie familiarity. In conversations around the world, extremist Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists, as well as some on the far right and far left of U.S. politics — have all featured similar arguments.

The stories usually involve a nefarious plot by outsiders to destroy their culture or faith, or future. They say they have had to act in self-defense. As the victims of the plot, they have no choice but to respond.

There is usually some distant, all-powerful covert force — the CIA, the Mossad, oil-rich Arab potentates — deftly stage-managing each event. Local people are helpless victims, with no responsibility for what occurs.

When I asked the Bosnian Serb men about the future of the former Yugoslavia, they said it would be decided in London and Washington. “Basically, how the English and Americans decide,” one told me. “That’s how it will be.”

Though there had been a decade of progress in Bosnia after the 1995 peace accord ended the war, the country has been moving steadily backward over the past 10 years. Bosnian Serb denial of the Srebrenica massacre is growing. Bosnian Muslim resentment of that denial is simmering.

Violence erupted at the 20th anniversary commemoration. Groups of young Bosnian Muslim men hurled stones and slurs at Serbian Prime Minister Alexander Vucic, a wartime ultranationalist now turned pro-Western moderate, forcing him to flee.

The International Commission on Missing Persons, meanwhile, is expanding internationally and applying the DNA identification system it developed to tragedies in other parts of the world. It is identifying the missing in Iraq, Chile and South Africa, as well as victims of typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and the passengers shot down in a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine.

Yet scientific and technological advances seem to have changed few views. One new conspiracy theory circulated by Serb nationalists is that the remains recently buried in the Srebrenica memorial are Filipinos who died in typhoon Haiyan.

Friday 17 July 2015

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/07/17/it-never-happened-how-to-deny-genocide-in-the-face-of-science/

continue reading

Malaysian team enters Thailand to find more human smuggling mass graves

Malaysian police and forensic experts have entered Thailand to find out at least 91 more human smuggling graves believed to be located at a reserve forest near the shared border.

The route via Ban Talok in Thailand will only take about an hour because the path is not as steep as the Wang Kelian route, where another transit camp had been discovered earlier, reports Malaysian news network Astro Awani.

Six land rovers and pick-up trucks were seen leaving the Padang Besar police station at about 9am. The vehicles are believed to be part of the logistics team which will be bringing the equipments to dig the graves.

Malaysian police had earlier said that Thai authorities have granted them five days to enter the camp and bring out the bodies through Thailand’s Banh.

Thailand police in early May had found secret human-trafficking camps on their side of the border and dozens of shallow graves. They launched a crackdown on human-smuggling following the discovery of the mass graves.

Meanwhile, 35 human skeletons found in the Bukit Burma jungle in Wang Kelian and believed to be victims of the human trafficking syndicates have been taken to a hospital for pathological processes.

To date, 139 graves at 28 temporary camps of the human trafficking syndicates were found between Kampung Wai in Kuala Perlis and Tangga 100 at Felcra Lubuk Sireh in Padang Besar.

Thursday 4 June 2015

http://www.dhakatribune.com/world/2015/jun/04/malaysian-team-enters-thailand-find-more-mass-graves

continue reading

Shining Path victims' remains returned 30 years after their deaths

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

continue reading

Iraqis search for missing loved ones in mass graves

Sadiq Sabr’s friends and son leave a northern Iraq hospital without finding his body, the unused coffin they brought to hold it strapped to the roof of a white minibus.

Like so many others whose loved ones have gone missing in Iraq’s conflict with Islamic State jihadists, Sabr’s friends have all but given up hope of finding him alive and want — if nothing else — to recover his body for proper burial.

Sabr, a truck driver, was kidnapped by IS militants near the town of Sulaiman Bek in Salaheddin province, north of Baghdad, which was retaken by security forces earlier this month.

He was seized on June 11, a day after IS overran the northern city of Mosul and then swept south through much of Iraq’s Sunni Arab heartland.

Sabr was en route to Baghdad, followed by his friend and boss Mohammed Hatem, when they heard shots.

“We turned around and spent the night in a restaurant, then left at 5:30 am,” Hatem said.

It was then that the militants took Sabr.

Hatem tried to call his friend immediately after he was taken, but an unknown voice answered, saying: “This is the Islamic State. Your friend is a Shiite, we will kill him.”

By 5:45 a.m., the phone had been turned off for good, and for almost three months, there have been no signs that Sabr is still alive.

IS, a radical Sunni organization, considers Shiite Muslims — who make up the majority of Iraq’s population — to be heretics, and frequently targets them in attacks.

When Hatem heard that Sulaiman Bek had been retaken, he traveled north along with Sabr’s son Ahmed and other friends to attempt to recover his body.

So far, 35 bodies have been exhumed from mass graves discovered in the town, an officer and a doctor said.

The stench of rotted flesh permeates the air in Sulaiman Bek, where freshly churned earth and nearby shovels mark one of the grave sites.

The ground is stained with blood at a place near the entrance of the town, where a Kurdish officer says the militants carried out the killings.

Hatem dug in Sulaiman Bek looking for his friend, but while his shovel struck pieces of bone and tissue, he found no trace of Sabr.

The same was true at the hospital in Kirkuk, a city to the north of Sulaiman Bek, where recovered bodies were taken.

Night had fallen by the time the minibus carrying the coffin intended for Sabr was able to reach Kirkuk, as the road is full of checkpoints manned by Kurdish fighters who only allow a trickle of Arabs to pass.

While bodies from the Sulaiman Bek graves are now in the hospital’s morgue, people were not immediately allowed in to see them.

The following morning, Hatem headed to the morgue with Ahmed, Sabr’s eldest son.

Dr. Shakur Ibrahim, who runs the morgue, said the facility received some 18 bodies found in Sulaiman Bek, but that given their condition, the exact number is unclear.

“Some were killed by bullets, there were holes in their clothes,” he said, but the cause of death cannot be determined for all of the bodies due to the extensive decomposition.

Families could search for their loved ones on a television screen at the morgue’s entrance, which displayed a grisly parade of broken bodies.

A piece of shirt, a football jersey, dirt-covered bones, a mobile phone — it was scant evidence with which to identify a missing person.

Their faces tense, Hatem and Ahmed scanned the images one after another, searching for a sign of Sabr.

“We have no evidence that my father is among these people,” Ahmed said in the hospital’s car park.

Hatem, Ahmed and his father’s other friends then left for Baghdad, the empty coffin on the roof, on a road that would take them past Sulaiman Bek, which may still hold Sabr’s body.

Hatem, who lost both his mother and his wife in a bombing three years ago and never found his wife’s body, said he was considering stopping, taking up a shovel and digging in search of his friend again.

Tuesday 9 September 2014

http://www.timesofisrael.com/iraqis-search-for-missing-loved-ones-in-mass-graves/

continue reading

Drug war mass graves in Mexico

The hole is at least 50 feet wide, with rocky edges that veer straight down. The bottom is so deep, it’s shrouded in complete darkness. Locals in this tiny village, tucked between the mountains in the central Mexican state of Michoacán, call it the Barranco del Manguito, the Gorge of the Mango. According to Rubén, the 34-year-old man who drove me here, the pit harbors a dark secret. He says it’s a narcofosa, a makeshift grave where drug traffickers dump the bodies of their victims.

“Several years ago, members of a local drug gang dumped an entire family here,” says Rubén, who asked that we not use his real name. “They were five or six people. They killed them over a drug deal gone wrong. They put their bodies in a pickup truck and pushed the whole thing down the hole. There could be other bodies, too. They always use places like this. It’s perfect, because no one even thinks of looking for bodies here.”

Though the hole is too deep, and its sides to steep for us to personally verify Rubén’s story, he does know the area and the local underworld. Before a wave of violence scared him into retirement, he worked as a driver and marijuana farmer for La Familia Michoacana, a now-defunct drug cartel that terrorized the region between 2006 and 2010.

As Mexico’s violent drug war rages on, the country has become marked with narco-graves. While more of them surface each month, critics say the government isn’t doing nearly enough to locate the dead. Some even accuse law enforcement officials of working with the cartels, allowing them not only to bury large numbers of victims with impunity, but also ensuring that the graves are never found.

Last Friday, authorities in Michoacán unearthed several clandestine graves in the vicinity of Lázaro Cárdenas, a Pacific port city some 60 miles to the east. Police dug up 10 bodies in five graves. It still isn’t known who the victims were, who killed them or when they were buried, but few doubt that the dead were casualties of the brutal gangland battles that have plagued Michoacán for the last seven years.



Since 2006, Mexican authorities have uncovered at least 174 narcofosas in 19 different states, containing more than 1,000 bodies. Most of the graves are small, like the ones found in Lázaro Cárdenas. Others resemble the gruesome killing fields of Cambodia and Bosnia. Between last November and February, authorities discovered three mass graves in Jalisco state, just across the border with Michoacán, recovering more than 100 bodies over the course of four months. The bodies showed signs of torture, decapitation, and were riddled with bullet wounds.

Most notorious were the narcofosas in San Fernando, a town in the northern state of Tamaulipas, which borders Texas. In 2010, the bodies of 72 massacred migrants were found in a warehouse. Less than a year later, a mass grave was discovered with the remains of 193 people. All of the victims were reportedly killed by Los Zetas, one of Mexico’s most violent drug cartels. “There are so many mass graves in Mexico, the country is starting to resemble a Swiss cheese,” says Jorge Reveles, a veteran crime reporter who has investigated narcofosas and written numerous books about the drug war. “The number of graves that hasn’t been found is infinitely larger than the number that has been discovered.”

Statistics support his theory. Last week, the Mexican government admitted that more than 22,000 people have gone missing since the drug war began in 2006, when then president Felipe Calderón deployed the military to combat the country’s drug cartels. That number is significantly higher than the 9,000 reported missing last year. And last Tuesday, the National Citizen Observatory, a crime watchdog, released a report indicating that Mexico now has more kidnappings than any other country in the world, with 0.8 kidnappings per 100,000 people.

But not only is the number of disappeared alarmingly high, critics also say that criminals can dump bodies wherever they want, in some cases even with the assistance of corrupt law enforcement officials. How else, they argue, would it be possible for anyone to bury dozens, sometimes hundreds of people without anyone noticing?

“It seems that a blind eye has been turned to organized crime, allowing them to disappear, kill and bury with ease,” wrote Ruben Martín, a columnist for the El Economista newspaper, after the graves in Jalisco state were found earlier this year. “It is a very serious issue that must be clarified.”

Moreover, many also criticize the way the fosas are being investigated. “Take the example of San Fernando, where the biggest graves were found,” says José Reveles. “There was no prosecutor in town to properly lead an investigation. Some of the bodies were damaged when they were taken out of the grave and the identification process took far too much time. It is an awful development for families of the disappeared, who often need to travel the whole country just to find out if their loved ones happened to have been found in a newly discovered mass grave.”

Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto has promised to ramp up the fight against organized crime. Part of his strategy is the formation of the Gendarmería, a new elite police unit working under the auspices of the Federal Police. This week saw the first deployment of 350 Gendarmería agents in Valle de Bravo, an affluent town near Mexico City, which has recently reported a wave of kidnappings.

But many doubt whether the current government is willing or able to solve the gruesome mysteries of Mexico’s disappeared and mass graves. “If you ask me, it’s all for show,” says the former pot farmer Rubén. “In Michoacán alone, there are graves everywhere, hundreds of people have disappeared. The authorities could easily find most of the fosas, but I feel that it just doesn’t interest them.”

Wednesday 3 September 2014

http://www.businessinsider.com/drug-war-mass-graves-in-mexico-are-making-the-country-resemble-swiss-cheese-2014-9

continue reading

The 'crying women' at Mexico's mass graves

Tres Valles is so small that deaths in the town are announced by a loudspeaker mounted onto a car roof.

Benita Fuentes was the latest member of this tight-knit community to have passed away, so an official from the town hall drives around the potholed streets playing a recorded message giving the time and place of her wake.

An elderly woman, Ms Fuentes slipped away in the night from natural causes. But the spectre of death, of violent death, lingers over Tres Valles at present.

The sleepy town was catapulted into the news in Mexico last month after at least 31 bodies were discovered buried at a ranch just walking distance from its picturesque main square.

There are local rumours that another 10 bodies were found that were not officially declared.

Those deaths did not receive the same dignified recognition by the town hall as Benita Fuentes's.

Rather it was the vultures circling overhead that alerted people to the bodies.

The graves were found at a ranch called El Diamante, a nondescript patch of countryside in the eastern state of Veracruz.

The area is green, lush and thick with jungle. Twitchy policemen inside a patrol car guard the blue gate, preventing anyone except forensic investigators from entering the site.

Photos published online, however, suggest that what lies just beyond the brow of the hill is as disturbing a scene as has ever been uncovered in Veracruz.

The remains of men, women and at least one child were found, many of them dismembered and decapitated.

'Crying woman'

Tres Valles was the latest of 246 graves discovered in Mexico over the past three years, according to official figures.

In her wooden shack on the outskirts of the town, Alberta Diaz, known as Dona Berta, is slowly recovering from the emotional turmoil of burying five members of her family - her daughter, Rosalia, and four of her grandchildren.

Ms Diaz recalls the shock of finding out they were missing.

"They took them on a Friday, but I didn't realise until the following morning," the grief-stricken 61-year-old explains in a barely audible voice.

"Five days later, the newspaper said some bodies had been found and published her [Rosalia's] name and her nickname, Bailarina [dancer]."

Rosalia, along with four of her children - the youngest just 15 years old - had been killed and buried in the mass grave at El Diamante.

After the bodies were exhumed, the state security secretary in Veracruz said the victims in the grave "weren't decent people", implying they had links to one or other of the two drug cartels battling for superiority in this region of Mexico - the Zetas and their rivals the Gulf Cartel.

Though it pains her to admit it, Dona Berta is prepared to accept that her daughter was involved in organised crime. But she insists her grandchildren did nothing to deserve such a brutal end.

"It made me very sad to read their death certificates. My daughter's said: 'Stab wounds and slit throat'. I couldn't sleep last night after reading them, each one the same: dismembered, dismembered, dismembered," she sighs.

"If my daughter had done something wrong or owed a debt, her children shouldn't have had to pay for it."

Macabre pilgrimage

The nearest big town to Tres Valles is Tierrablanca. There, living in the same abject poverty as Dona Berta, is Elvira Gomez, another mother who travelled to El Diamante that day looking for her children.

Elvira has spent eight months on a macabre pilgrimage, visiting mass graves and morgues in the search for her sons, Rodrigo and Juan.

"There is a myth in Mexico about the crying woman, La Llorona (who walks the earth suffering for her lost child)," Elvira says choking back the tears.

"Well, it's not a myth, it's true. I'm one."

Unlike Dona Berta, however, she does not accept that her sons, aged 18 and 21, were involved with the drug cartels.

She is adamant they were picked up one day by the local police.



She says they have not been seen since. "I don't know why they took them. We're working people, peaceful people. I don't know what the problem is." Wrong circles

The interior minister recently stated that there were only 8,000 missing people in Mexico.

After accusations that the figure was a gross underestimation, the government revised it upwards to 16,000. But many human rights organisations say the real figure simply is not known.

What is clear, though, is that the problem affects families at both ends of the social spectrum.

Juan Rene Chiunti is a deputy for the governing PRI party in the Veracruz state parliament. His brother has been missing, feared dead, for 15 months.

Yet he insists the vast majority of people who vanish or end up in graves like Tres Valles moved in the wrong circles, often with the implicit knowledge of their families.

"Today those same family members cry: 'Oh, my poor son, where is he?'" he says.

Well, the first question I'd ask those families is: 'What did your son work in or study? Let's start there.' When you can answer that question satisfactorily, then we can see whether or not he was a good person."

"But if he was on the wrong path, we have a saying around here: he who walks badly, ends badly."

As we leave Tres Valles, we are told that another mass grave has been found nearby, this time with eight bodies inside.

Elvira Gomez, and other desperate mothers like her, were doubtless already on their way there, to see if they too can start to grieve.

Friday 18 July 2014

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-28247468?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

continue reading

Bosnia buries Srebrenica victims identified 19 years after the massacre

The remains of 175 victims of the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia have been laid to rest in their final destination of Sarajevo.

After 19 years the pain remains raw.

In an annual event, newly found or identified remains of the victims are transported through the town, so that their loved ones can finally pay their respects before being laid to rest.

Fatima Efendic, lost her son Amir in the mass killing. Having found his remains she can finally begin to grieve.

“I am happy we found him,” she said fighting back tears. “I dreamt of him last night. I was looking for him in my dream. I found him on top of a house, I held him in my lap. My wish and dream finally came true. I just took him into my lap.”

Around 8,000 Muslim men were rounded up and killed when the town was seized during the Bosnian war on July 11 1995. Just over 6,000 have been exhumed from mass graves to be buried at Potocari cemetery.

At the International Centre on Missing Persons, the search continues for the remaining bodies.

“We calculate that there are still about a thousand persons missing,” explained Kathryne Bomberger, Director-General of ICMP. “But also, in addition to that, in addition to these thousand persons, there will be thousands of additional pieces of bodies, of skeletal remains that will also be uncovered that could be re-associated to the ones in the mortuary. So, this is an extremely complex process.”

Though many families wait to recover more complete remains before burial, for those yet to find their missing sons, brothers, husbands and fathers, discovering just one bone would be enough to provide closure.

Friday 11 July 2014

http://www.euronews.com/2014/07/11/bosnia-buries-srebrenica-victims-identified-19-years-after-the-massacre/

continue reading

Japan's move to repatriate war dead will face backlash from China, S Korea

The Japanese government is drawing up legislation that will make the repatriation of the bodies of its second-world-war dead a “state responsibility”, but analysts anticipate the initiative will attract renewed criticism from China and South Korea.

The legislation is scheduled to be submitted to the Diet before the end of the month and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is seeking the support of other parties.

Given the LDP’s majorities in both houses of parliament, the legislation is expected to pass with little debate.

Under the proposal, specialist staff will be sent on diplomatic missions in countries where Japanese troops were killed during the conflict with the task of gathering information about the locations of grave sites and battlefields.

Additional funding will also be provided for the work of recovering and repatriating any remains that are located, although no specific figure has been placed on the amount that will be made available.

“Internal Affairs Minister [Yoshitaka] Shindo has been quite adamant in proposing this kind of effort in recent years and there are now many other like-minded politicians in Prime Minister [Shinzo] Abe’s government,” Yoichi Shimada, a professor of international relations at Japan’s Fukui Prefectural University, told the South China Morning Post.

Shindo was fiercely criticised earlier in January after paying his respects at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine just days after Abe had paid an official visit to the controversial war shrine.

“I believe it is quite natural for any country to try to recover the remains of its soldiers and it is shameful that previous administrations have not done anything about this situation sooner,” Shimada said.

An estimated 2.4 million Japanese were killed at home and overseas during the second world war, with the remains of around 1.13 million people still unaccounted for.

The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has in recent years made tentative efforts to recover remains, with around 2,000 bodies repatriated in both 2011 and 2012.

The government is aiming to increase that number rapidly and records suggest that some 600,000 bodies can be recovered.

The vast majority of these were troops killed in land battles across Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands. Tens of thousands died in the fierce fighting in places such as New Guinea, the Philippines, Tarawa, Palau, Guam and Myanmar.

While some were buried in mass graves, others were simply bulldozed into the caves they were defending because it was too dangerous for American troops to try to capture the strongpoints.

“One of the reasons for this new effort is to strengthen diplomatic ties with other nations, such as Myanmar,” said Shimada. “There are the remains of many Japanese killed in Myanmar that have still to be found and it has been hard for Japan to deal with the totalitarian government there in recent years.

“Through this initiative, we can improve our relations and face up to China together.”

Given the deteriorating relationship between Tokyo and Beijing in recent months, however, it is unlikely that China will co-operate in the recovery effort.

Shimada dismisses the impact of Chinese intransigence.

“Most of the cremated remains of men killed in China and on the Korean Peninsula were repatriated during the conflict because they are close to Japan,” he said. “Most of the missing are in Southeast Asia or around the labour camps in Siberia where they were held after being captured by the Soviet Union in the latter stages of the war.

“It is true that no matter what Japan does diplomatically at the moment, China complains,” he added. “But I believe their aggression towards Japan and other nations in the region – the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and others – will only stir up resentment against their heavy-handed tactics.”

Thursday 09 January 2014

http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1401461/japans-move-repatriate-war-dead-will-face-backlash-china-s-korea-analysts

continue reading

DNA from LA area immigrants could solve painful mysteries from Guatemala's civil war

Javier Alvarez doesn’t remember much from the time his father went missing from their home in Guatemala in 1982, at the height of the violence during that country's civil war.

He was only ten years old then. But he remembers the hushed conversations between his mother and grandfather, the hand-wringing as they tried to come to grips with his father’s kidnapping.

“I remember they told me that my father had disappeared, and my mother and grandfather were going around in circles," said Alvarez, who now lives near downtown Los Angeles with his family. "They were asking them for ransom, but no one came for it, for the money."

His father never reappeared.

More than three decades later, Alvarez joined the audience in a meeting hall at the Central American Resource Center near downtown, filled with fellow Guatemalan refugees.

They were there to learn about a project that’s been using DNA to identify the bodies of some of Guatemala’s roughly 45,000 wartime desaparecidos - the disappeared – most of them kidnapped by Guatemalan military. They are among the estimated 200,000 casualties of the lengthy war, which ended in 1996 after 36 years.

Unraveling the mysteries of a war

Since 2004, the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation has been exhuming and identifying the bodies of desaparecidos, excavating clandestine mass graves and military sites. The non-profit NGO receives U.S. and international funding. In 2008, they began collecting DNA from family members of the missing in Guatemala. So far they’ve identified more than 3,000 bodies, about 200 of them through DNA.

“We wanted to give a voice to the disappeared," said Fredy Peccerelli, a forensic anthropologist and director of the Guatemala City-based organization. "We wanted to give a voice to those bodies. We wanted the bodies, those disappeared people, to talk directly to their families so we could connect with them. We wanted them to remember that their loved one is missing, and they need to look for them.”

Peccerelli's family was personally affected by the war. His uncle was among those who disappeared and was never heard from again. His immediate family fled to the United States after his father was threatened, settling in New York. Peccerelli grew up in Brooklyn.

So far, the DNA bank has met with relative success in Guatemala, where Peccerelli says they have been receiving more than 200 DNA samples a month from families with missing loved ones. Some families have gone so far as to lend their names and photos to a campaign dubbed "Mi nombre no es XX" (My name is not XX), referring to a term used in Guatemala for unidentified bodies, similar to "John Doe."

Reaching out to immigrants in the United States

The idea now is to make inroads in the U.S., starting with Los Angeles, Guatemala's largest expatriate community. So far, the group has collected only a couple dozen DNA samples here. But Peccerelli hopes more immigrants will participate now that recent trials of accused Guatamalan war criminals - including two in the U.S. - have revived public interest.

Not everyone affected is willing to come forward. Many of those who survived the war carry their trauma silently, trying to bury the past, said Patricia Foxen, an anthropologist on the board of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission. She said it's especially complicated for the families of desaparecidos, who may never know what happened to their loved ones.

“It’s extremely difficult for them, because sometimes they are not actually sure what happened to their disappeared family member," Foxen said. "When I was doing my field work in Guatemala, for example, the guerrillas were being demobilized in these camps, and people the community that I was living in would ask me to take pictures because they thought I might be able to find their sons and husbands who had disappeared fifteen years or twenty years beforehand. I thought it was astonishing that they still had hope that they might still show up.”

None did. It’s presumed that those who went missing have long been dead. Foxen says even today, even for those who moved thousands of miles north, "it is really hard for people to live with that big question mark every single day.”

It’s a question that Javier Alvarez wants to put to rest. At the recent community meeting in Los Angeles, Alvarez sat down to have a DNA swab taken from the inside of his cheek. Afterward, he grew emotional, recalling his childhood.

Life after his father disappeared was tough. His mother was forced to raise six children alone, the oldest child just 12. Eventually they all made it to the United States. Alvarez married and now has a family of his own. But the loss of his father still haunts him.

“All of this makes me glad to know there is a possibility that I can find my father again after so much time," he said, trying to hold back tears. "You can imagine – in life, you miss your father, your mother. I would have liked to have enjoyed being with him, from the time I was small to when I grew up.”

Peccerelli says he used to think finding and burying the bodies of loved ones would provide closure to these families. Now he’s not so sure. He recalled what one man he helped said afterward.

”One of them said, ‘I had a purpose before, because my father was missing," Peccerelli said. "And he was found, and I'm very thankful. I don’t know what to do with myself now, because my entire life was about looking for him.' "

But the work continues. Peccerelli and his team will return to Southern California for the December sentencing date of Jorge Sosa in Riverside County. Sosa is an accused Guatemalan war criminal, recently convicted of U.S. immigration fraud. He will likely be stripped of his U.S. citizenship and face eventual deportation to Guatemala, to stand trial over accusations that he took part in a brutal 1982 massacre of civilians in the small village of Dos Erres.

The Guatemalan forensic team will come equipped with DNA kits, hoping that among those who are following Jorge Sosa's sentencing, they'll find more refugees like Alvarez who are seeking answers.

Wednesday 16 October 2013

http://www.scpr.org/blogs/multiamerican/2013/10/15/14972/dna-from-la-area-immigrants-could-solve-painful-my/

continue reading

Documenting Afghan mass graves

University of Lincoln lecturer Gillian Fowler is just back from Afghanistan, where she has been teaching Afghans how to properly document mass graves and identify bodies from 35 years of conflict. Here, the forensic anthropologist tells reporter Paul Whitelam about her work.

In a nation torn apart by war and riddled with corruption, cold hard science is the surest keeper of truth.

And in future, the work of Gillian Fowler, consulting forensic anthropologist for Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), could finally give families the answers they have longed for.

Ms Fowler has been training local Afghans in human osteology – the study of bones – and exhumation techniques.

She has been working on a three-year project called Securing Afghanistan's Past with the Afghan Forensic Science Organisation, set up through PHR.

Documenting burial sites and educating people to preserve them means atrocities committed by tribes, the Taliban, the Soviets and the mujahideen can be fully investigated.

And perhaps, at some point, ordinary Afghans will see justice, or at least reconciliation.

"There's a great deal of construction work going on in Afghanistan, such as road building, where human remains are dug up and often just thrown into skips," said Ms Fowler.

"Another issue is families have exhumed some graves but bodies have not been identified. People just say: 'That's my father', for example.

"The people we train need to know the difference between human and animal bones, which is where I came in.

"We looked at a grave with the Ministry of Interior where there were two human skeletons and lots of bones from animals butchered around the Soviet invasion era.

"You need to know how many people are in a grave and once you can identify those individuals you can then do a biological profile to establish the age, sex, stature and ancestry at the time of death."

As a result of the project a report has just been published to challenge the Afghan government to properly protect graves.

It also calls for the legal recognition of people's rights to know what really happened to their missing relatives.

Ms Fowler became involved in the project having previously spent several years working for the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala, where she was involved in exhuming graves of innocent victims of genocide from the 1980s.

"In Afghanistan we use the example of Guatemala," she said.

"At the moment the General is being tried in court 21 years after the genocide there.

"Local people and witnesses know where the graves are.

"We are probably talking 20 to 30 years before Afghanistan has some sort of justice or reconciliation."

Ms Fowler said working in Afghanistan, where crime scenes are often unprotected, is full of challenges.

"Kabul is dusty and dirty and traffic is so chaotic – there are no rules of the road," she said.

"There are bombed out buildings and you can still see bullet holes in lamp posts.

"The main risk in Kabul is not that of being killed by suicide bombs – it's being involved in a car accident, the mob dragging you out of the car and killing you.

"No one knows what's going to happen after the foreign troops leave at the end of 2014.

"Our work has the full support of the Ministry of Interior. But we do not work for any one side. We are completely impartial. We'll deal with a mass grave whether it's Taliban prisoners or anyone else."

Colleague Stefan Schmitt, who directs PHR's International Forensic Programme and was the report's lead author, previously worked with Gillian in Guatemala.

The paper was presented at the Truth Seeking and the Role of Forensic Science conference in Kabul last month.

Mr Schmitt said: "Since 1978, Afghans have continuously lived through protracted cycles of violence that included massive human rights violations and war crimes with virtual impunity for many of the perpetrators.

"Healing such deep wounds is a complex and lengthy process.

"What is needed from both the government of Afghanistan and the international community is a serious commitment to a vision for a better future – and that includes addressing the wrongs of the past."

Saturday 11 May 2013

http://www.thisislincolnshire.co.uk/Lincoln-lecturer-helps-Afghans-document-mass/story-18933578-detail/story.html#axzz2SzuY62Xq

continue reading

The long arc of justice in Guatemala

Thirty years ago, a "scorched earth" counterinsurgency strategy in the Quiche region of Guatemala left 1,771 Maya Ixil dead, tens of thousands displaced, and ruptured the social fabric of the community. This ruthless campaign of state repression was carried out by General Jose Efrain Rios Montt during the darkest chapter of the 36-year conflict, in which 200,000 Guatemalans died, the vast majority of whom were indigenous Mayans, and another 50,000 disappeared. Today, despite a pervasive culture of impunity in Guatemala and a veil of silence still surrounding those years, Rios Montt and Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, his chief intelligence officer, are being prosecuted in Guatemala for genocide and other crimes against humanity, a day many never thought would come.

The selection of intrepid Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz in 2010 ushered in a new era in Guatemala's struggle against impunity. Long accused of atrocities, Rios Montt enjoyed immunity from prosecution as a member of Congress for 20 years, but was charged shortly after his departure from office in 2012. His prosecution sets a historic precedent for the people of Guatemala and the global community, representing the first time a head of state stands trial in a national court for the crime of genocide.

At the front of the cavernous courtroom, three judges sit closely together, occasionally huddled in conference, along a substantial wooden bench that stretched the length of the courtroom. On the wall above hangs the Guatemalan coat of arms: crossed rifles to signify defence of territory, swords emblematic of honour, and the date of Guatemalan independence from Spain etched across a scroll upon which a quetzal is perched, all against a backdrop of bay leaf branches symbolising victory. These lofty symbols however are imbued with a more ambiguous meaning to the vast majority of Guatemalans.

One of the most savage periods in the internal conflict occurred after the bloodless coup that installed General Rios Montt as military leader on March 23, 1982. During his 17 month tenure, Rios Montt escalated and systematised a reign of terror initiated by his predecessor Lucas Garcia. By the time Rios Montt was deposed in a subsequent military coup, a grisly trail of blood laid bare his ruthless counterinsurgency strategy of murdering of men, women, children, the frail, and the elderly, accompanied by the calculated destruction of the fabric of their ancestral communities.

Unable to easily crush the small armed insurgency and the widespread popular movement among many of Guatemala's marginalised people that seemed to escalate along with the repression, Rios Montt developed a new strategy to crush the guerrillas: "If you cannot catch the fish, you must drain the sea". Based on the manipulated assumption that sympathetic indigenous populations provided logistical and ideological support for the insurgents, Rios Montt set out to decimate those communities. This strategy was developed and implemented with both tacit and overt US support: training in counter-insurgency tactics at the School of the Americas, and intelligence and military aid and assistance. Ronald Reagan continued to provide support to the Guatemalan military even after widespread reports of atrocities, claiming that "President Ríos Montt is a man of great personal integrity, and commitment... I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice".

Documents declassified during the late 90s, however, prompted then US President Bill Clinton to apologise. Recognising the evidentiary weight and power of both the declassified documents that contained categorical evidence of US complicity in the atrocities and the UN Historical Clarification Commission's nine-volume report, Clinton stated, "It is important that I state clearly that support for military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression of the kind described in the report was wrong." Some critics denounced the apology as hollow and misleading for failing to acknowledge that American support for Guatemalan military repression was an intentional effort to advance its own political and economic interests, despite the unspeakable and incalculable suffering it engendered.

After the conflict's end, the Historical Clarification Commission concluded that the military was responsible for 93 percent of the deaths, and that in four areas, the State of Guatemala committed genocide against its indigenous Mayan population. The Recovery of Historical Memory report [SP] of the Catholic Church echoed those findings. The department of Quiche was home to the Maya Ixil, considered by the military to be courageous and recalcitrant, and unusually resistant to dispossession from their ancestral lands. The military concluded that the insurgents had succeeded in the complete indoctrination of the Ixil, enjoying the support of 100 percent of the population in that area, though the reality was far more complicated and nuanced. Unable to easily suppress the resistance, the military fixated on the annihilation of the "internal enemy" through killing zones, a strategy documented by witnesses and memorialised in detailed military plans, including Operation Sofia.

'Scorched earth'

In the early days of the genocide trial, survivors of Rios Montt's "scorched earth" policy testified in harrowing detail about the abuses they suffered and the horrors they witnessed. Supporters populated the court to bear witness to the testimony of their companions, mere yards from the man accused of devastating their communities. Experts testified about their painstaking forensic work that documented causes of death and helped grieving families reclaim and rebury their loved ones. After weeks of gut-wrenching testimony, the next phase of the trial centred on demonstrating the carefully designed military plan of the Guatemalan military to "exterminate the subversive elements" of the Ixil. To achieve that goal, the military killed men, women, children, infants, aged and infirmed people, and deliberately ruptured the fabric of their communities by burning crops, slaughtering animals, destroying cultural artifacts and severing sacred spiritual connections to their ancestral lands.

The past was inextricably linked to the present, when Hugo Ramiro Leonardo Reyes, a former army mechanic, testified by video from an undisclosed location, fearing reprisal. The witness elicited audible gasps from the audience by implicating sitting president Otto Perez Molina in the crimes committed in Quiche in 1982, when he served as a field commander. This echoed other accusations from human rights groups that Perez Molina was complicit in war crimes in that region. These allegations are substantiated by a video of Major Tito, the nom de guerre of Perez Molina, standing over the bodies of guerrillas who witnesses say were tortured before being summarily executed in Nebaj in 1982. Perez Molina confirmed to the Prensa Libre in 2000 that Major Tito was his pseudonym, though he later denied the connection.

The US supported brutality was contextualised by various witnesses as occurring in the panic after the Cuban Revolution and the Cold War, when the US was particularly apprehensive about the geopolitics of the hemisphere. The US-sponsored coup in 1954 overthrew democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz, whose incipient agrarian reform efforts inflamed US concerns that Guatemalan land reform would compromise US military and political hegemony and private commercial interests in the region. Many analysts condemn the US's "wretched record of military cooperation" that led to deadly state repression against its own people throughout Central America during that era, a charge that continues to this day.

The defence endeavoured to exculpate Rios Montt on several substantive grounds, and engaged in an orchestrated strategy to delegitimise the trial. Denying that genocide occurred, defence witnesses attributed many of the atrocities to the insurgents themselves, while other deaths were characterised as unintentional collateral damage in the internal conflict for which Rios Montt bears no responsibility. Moreover, the defence argued that groups were targeted for ideological reasons, and politically motivated repression does not constitute genocide. The defence further claimed that Rios Montt did not exercise command responsibility over those on the ground in Quiche and elsewhere, and that he was unaware of and could not control rogue members of the military who perpetrated massacres. Rios Montt's own words, memorialised in an interview by Pamela Yates in 1982, came back to haunt him: while the notably less vigorous Rios Montt sat passively at the defence table, a younger, smiling and animated version played on a screen above his head, confidently declaring in response to a question of his control that "if I can't control the Army, then what am I doing here?"

A protracted trial

Amplifying the voice of the victims is important and meaningful, and their testimony has reinvigorated a historically stunted national dialogue about the dark side of Guatemala's recent past. But progressive elements of Guatemalan society are not sanguine about the transformative potential of a conviction. Survivors, lawyers, judges, witnesses and human rights defenders continue to receive threats. A conviction would clearly not be the end of the tortuous legal road on which this sordid story has travelled. Even before the trial's inception, defence attorneys have engaged in dilatory tactics and have been carefully laying the groundwork for multiple avenues of appeal, voicing their objections at every stage of the proceedings and engaging in a what critics characterise as a deliberate campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the trial. The appeals process could easily outlast an ageing Rios Montt's natural life, and would certainly endure past Paz y Paz's tenure as Attorney General.

Despite international condemnation of the genocide and the recent publicity engendered by the trial, many Guatemalans are either unaware of or deny that genocide occurred, including President Perez Molina and members of the business elite. Some who were hopeful that the public spotlight of trial would advance truth, memory and justice are sobered by the tenor of the regressive discourse it has generated. As we sat in the courtroom, the founder of the Foundation Against Terrorism was surrounded by press photographers, posing with a copy of the 20 page document he paid to distribute in the national newspaper that day. Replete with photographs, the gruesome document presents a starkly different narrative of the past, accusing the insurgents and their supporters of committing the atrocities and inflaming an already bitterly divided populace. The next day's newspaper sported a full page advertisement, decrying the trial and accusing survivors and their advocates of polarising the country and rubbing raw old wounds, a narrative many feared would incite violent reprisals. A reckoning will not come easily to Guatemala.

Some people believe that irrespective of the trial's outcome, members of ravaged Ixil communities have finally been provided with a public forum to recount their excruciating truths and honour the memory of their dead. As I sat with a group of massacre survivors around a long table draped with traditional artisanal cloths, my belief in the importance of reconciliation was deepened. The group thanked us for accompanying them in their struggles, told us they drew strength from our solidarity, and shared their stories of profound sorrow and incalculable loss. We absorbed their anguish and horror, and were humbled and inspired by their fortitude, dignity, faith and steely determination to unearth truth, preserve memory and seek justice, to honour the dead and to ensure that history never repeats itself. As tears trickled down my cheeks, a soft-spoken man across the table held my gaze, and with the poignant gesture of a gentle nod and a subtle smile, conveyed his appreciation that we had come to bear witness and affirmed our shared humanity.

The survivor's unwavering faith in ultimate justice would be tested only hours later, when the judicial process took a turn that shocked even hardened observers. The initial judge to hear the charges had just annulled the proceedings, a decision poised to cost survivors and their lawyers even more time and strain already depleted financial and emotional resources. When Judge Jazmin Barrios indicated that the proceedings would continue, prompting defence attorneys to stage a theatrical walkout, in violation of their professional and ethical responsibilities.

At the much anticipated session in court the next morning, an unflappable and resolute Judge Barrios electrified the packed courtroom as she read her eloquent and impeccably supported legal arguments, declared her commitment to uphold the rule of law, and vowed that the trial would continue. Given the legal and political manoeuvring, Judge Barrios suspended the proceedings pending a final decision from the Constitutional Court. Court observers erupted into elated applause, and gathered outside to march to the Constitutional Court, amid the rhythm of drums and banners of solidarity proclaiming that "We are all Ixils". In a process marked by irregularities and setbacks, it is hard to predict what comes next. But one thing is clear: justice may be delayed yet again, but the resilient survivors, fiercely determined lawyers and their supporters will continue to wage this struggle.

No panacea, but cathartic

While symbolically important, no one believes that Rios Montt's ultimate conviction would be a panacea. Guatemala faces seemingly insurmountable challenges, and a guilty verdict would not curtail the violence plaguing the country, nor dismantle the country's deeply entrenched structural inequality, legendary impunity, endemic racism, pervasive and severe poverty, corrupt institutions, ongoing land rights struggles, femicide, targeted killings of community leaders, or mayhem attributed to drug trafficking and gangs. But truth, collective memory and healing are essential for survivors of atrocities and for the country as a whole, as societies that do not reckon with a violent past will continue to suffer from its enduring legacy.

It is remarkable that survivors who lost everything but their humanity somehow possess the grace, courage and unshakable faith that despite everything, justice will be served. For a country with a notoriously corrupt judicial system, Judge Barrios is an inspiring beacon of integrity, impartiality, independence and professionalism. The next weeks will be perilous for human rights defenders, survivors and their supporters, as threats to unleash violent reprisals intensify. In these harrowing times, the accompaniment and solidarity of the international community can make a measurable and meaningful difference for the morale and safety of these brave and irrepressible souls.

The arc of history is long in Guatemala, but perhaps the survivors will be vindicated in their unwavering belief that charges against Rios Montt will bend the future towards justice.

Monday 22 April 2013

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/04/2013422115046800678.html

continue reading

University of Tenessee using donated corpses in mass grave project with international aspirations

Researchers wanted to bury the 10 bodies on the south bank of Fort Loudoun Lake. They had to do it by hand.

The brush, though bare in winter, was too dense and too sloped for machines. Instead, scientists in February cleared a path leading to the spot where, shovel by shovel, they dug four holes.

One grave now holds the piled remains of six people. Another holds three, and another a single body.

A fourth was dug out and then refilled only with dirt, a control for the experiment.

For the next three years University of Tennessee scientists will monitor these fresh burial sites from the sky, from the ground, through sampling and in different light spectrums to determine if the mass graves can be detected from afar.

If the remote sensing technology they plan to use works, it could mean huge gains in the ability to uncover clandestine graves around the world and to prosecute the killers.

“Mass graves are the most profound example of evil, and you may not be able to get away with it much longer if we can make this work,” said Michael Medler, a geography professor at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., who helped conceive the project nearly a decade ago.

Medler is close friends with lead UT researcher Amy Mundorff, who is perhaps best known in her field for helping to identify the remains of some of the thousands of victims of the 2001 World Trade Center attacks. She has been at UT three years, and she took the job with the hope that she could finally pursue this dream project.

The bodies being used for the unique experiment are all among donations made to UT’s internationally famous Forensic Anthropology Center, or the “Body Farm.”

It is the oldest and most established of a handful of research facilities around the country dedicated to studying the decomposition of human remains. Before now, research at the facility has been mostly used to help law enforcement and to facilitate domestic criminal cases.

If this broader, global experiment succeeds, it could propel the reputation of the university and its anthropology department to greater heights.

Exposing atrocities

Evidence of the horrors humans commit against each other exists in nearly every region of the world.

In Guatemala, three decades after his bloody dictatorship, Gen. Efrain Rios Montt is currently on trial concerning accusations that he sent soldiers to rape and kill thousands of Mayan villagers.

In Argentina, a forensic anthropology team trained by U.S. experts is still recovering and identifying the “Los Desaparecidos,” citizens accused of being Marxists who went missing during the country’s “Dirty War” of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Human-rights investigators are searching for victims in Libya, Sudan and Syria, where ongoing civil wars and genocide threaten the safety of both citizens and visitors trying to help them.

Some investigators already use before-and-after satellite images and ground-penetrating radar to find clues about possible graves, said Stefan Schmitt, director of the international forensic program with the U.S.-based Physicians for Human Rights.

“Remote sensing has always been a really big interest, especially as technology becomes more and more accessible,” Schmitt said. “But the problem is that it’s not definitive. You can show me the picture, and I can’t say anything until I get in there and dig a hole.

“Technology has always been limited by that step where you have to go in, and that makes a difference in places like Darfur (in Sudan) or Syria or other places where there are allegations of mass graves.”

UT researchers concede there may never be certainty that the blips that show up in the images are human graves. But they hope that by using multiple kinds of technology, they can at least predict them with higher probability.

When the International Commission on Missing Persons was established in Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of the 1996 G7 Summit in France, it and other human-rights groups made a chilling discovery: When investigators got too close, someone would dig up the graves of victims killed in the Balkans conflict and move them. Teams were using satellite images to track the movements of the graves, but it wasn’t always successful.

While the images can pick up large graves filled with hundreds of people, it’s more difficult to locate the more common plots with 10 or 20 or 30 bodies, said Dawnie Steadman, director of the Forensic Anthropology Center at UT who has also done extensive human-rights work in Argentina, Cyprus and Spain.

“So the focus of this project is on those smaller graves and trying to see if we can get the acumen of the technology to be that fine-grained,” said Steadman, whose role in the project is more of a logistics coordinator. “Are they only sensitive over fresh graves, and do we lose that sensitivity over time?

“If there’s a no-fly zone and we can’t get airplanes in there to do this technology, we’re still dependent on satellites. But what technology is going to be useful (in the field) depends on how long it’s been and how old we think the grave is,” Steadman said.

If forensic investigators can find the clandestine graves early on, they can monitor them using this technology even as the conflict on the ground wages on. When it’s safer to enter the country, organizations will know exactly where to look for the victims, said Mundorff.

To do this, UT is looking to cross-reference at least two kinds of remote sensing.

One technology, LiDAR, which is short for Light Detection and Ranging, uses a laser to trace the contours on the ground and look for subtle elevation changes. Initially, mass graves appear as mounds after they’re dug, but over time, as the human remains decompose, depressions form in the ground.

Related document: Graphic illustrating how LiDAR scanner technology is used in the detection of mass graves

The other technology, multi-spectral imagery, can look at what’s being reflected off the ground in different light spectra, such as blue, green, red, infrared and so forth. Different materials are reflected across the spectrum with specific signatures, said Katie Corcoran, a lead graduate student at UT who is using the project for her dissertation.

“If you know vegetation looks a certain way, but in this image it looks different, maybe that’s because it’s disturbed,” Corcoran said. “And then on top of that is a layer of LiDAR data that shows an elevation difference, maybe a mound or a depression, and it happens to be the same spot. You can say maybe that this is a manmade disturbance. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to say this is a grave.”

The bulk of Medler’s work at Western Washington has been in studying landscapes after forest fires, something with no obvious link to identifying the remains of dead people, Mundorff’s specialty.

But to do wildfire reconstructions, Medler has used the very technology now at work at the Body Farm.

They first compared their expertise during dinner while both were living on the East Coast. Medler is a college friend of Mundorff’s husband, Kurt.

Dawnie Steadman, director of the University of Tennessee’s Forensic Anthropology Center, maps a grave containing a donor’s remains in February. The mass-grave research project will observe the bodies for three years, detecting changes in the ground and looking at multispectral imagery.

When Mundorff left the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office to pursue her doctorate in Canada, those talks evolved over camping trips.

They brainstormed ideas while climbing granite massifs in Squamish, British Columbia’s outdoors mecca. They would nail down details at the pub afterward.

“We ended up talking about doing a project to look at clandestine graves, and (Medler) suggested using LiDAR, which had never been done before,” Mundorff said.

They considered different methodologies — using existing mass graves versus creating their own. They looked for funding, but struggled to find a grant that matched their criteria.

Medler even had a graduate student plotting on a map mass graves around the world. They talked of Mundorff joining Western Washington as an adjunct faculty member just to get the project rolling. But without funding or a facility where they could conduct the experiment, the project stalled.

Tennessee, however, had the facility, the resources and the interest in helping Mundorff launch a mass-grave project. UT even had a newly-acquired, untouched piece of land adjacent to the existing Body Farm. Fresh land was needed to be sure the technology doesn’t pick up chemical remnants of previous bodies.

Mundorff got the offer from UT during the spring of 2009 and arrived the following January.

Not long after, she got an email from Katie Corcoran, an anthropologist working for the Seminole Tribe in Florida to recover cultural artifacts on its land. Corcoran was familiar with LiDAR from her work in Florida and had recently read an article on researchers at her alma mater, the University of Central Florida, who were using the technology to detect Mayan ruins hidden in the Belize jungle.

A mentor suggested Corcoran look up Mundorff, who had already made a name for herself in the anthropology field.

In that 2009 email, the Floridian pitched almost the exact same project that Mundorff had been privately mulling for nearly 10 years. Corcoran soon found herself heading to Knoxville to continue her studies. The project’s foundation had been formed.

Early days

It takes three wrong turns, two phone calls and an argument with Google Maps to eventually find the Body Farm.

That’s intentional.

A brick building with an A-frame roof sits on the South Knoxville site near the University of Tennessee Medical Center hidden from view of the access road. Immediately behind the building is a fence. Behind the fence is the plot of land that hosts UT’s new research project.

The closely guarded swath of land on the banks of Fort Loudoun Lake is unremarkable, covered with fallen hardwoods, discarded oak leaves and poison ivy. There’s a steep incline as the ridge slopes down to the water’s edge.

Once Mundorff arrived at UT, it took another two years to get the mass-graves project under way. There was a change of leadership at the Forensic Anthropology Center, which turned out to be promising for the initiative because it included a new director with heavy interest in human rights — Steadman. But delays in 2011 and 2012 in getting the fence built around the new land also created hiccups because the work would have to be put through a public bidding process.

By the time the fence quietly went up in January, Mundorff had been at UT for three years and Corcoran had been a graduate student for almost two.

The down time, however, also helped the experiment and concept to expand significantly, cutting across various departments.

Now, two molecular anthropology graduate students are working on a DNA co-mingling project to see if it’s possible for the genetic material of two people to seep into and contaminate each other’s remains, which would make it difficult to identify victims.

Two agriculture professors will study the soil ecology as bodies in the graves break down. Another is cataloguing plant species in the area to see if they change as the decomposition releases nitrogen into the environment.

When the project’s three years are up, the facility will do a workshop for international workers on how to excavate mass graves. It’s a course that has only been offered with animal remains — never with humans.

“As she developed this project, (Mundorff) wanted to make it as robust as possible, to have as many different technologies and researchers involved as possible,” Steadman said.

But there is still one looming obstacle: money.

The project needs about $200,000, possibly more.

Corcoran hoped to receive a grant from a private company to do the multi-spectral imaging, and she and Mundorff hope to receive access to ground LiDAR technology from a resource outside the university.

But the group still needs funding to test the soil and plant samples they collect and to gather aerial LiDAR scans that could be more precise and in line with what would be used in the field. A pilot study Mundorff recently completed could be the key to the funding they need.

To boost her theory that buried corpses release nitrogen into the surrounding soil and vegetation — and that those chemicals are visible to the remote sensing technologies — Mundorff has already conducted a small-scale pilot study.

In January 2011, she buried one body at the Forensic Anthropology Research Facility at Texas State University, San Marcos.

To conduct the baseline study, Mundorff needed land that had never hosted decomposing bodies before, and UT still hadn’t erected the fence for the new land here. The Texas State facility, however, was founded only five years ago and has a largely untouched 26 acres.

So, Mundorff paid a graduate student in San Marcos to monitor the site weekly over several months. Once the body was buried, however, Texas was hit with one of the worst droughts in recent memory, slowing the regrowth of vegetation around the grave. The results from her first batch of 37 samples were lackluster.

“I sent off samples initially and got results that seemed like there might be something there, but it wasn’t as clear of a pattern as we had hoped,” Mundorff said.

Disappointed but not discouraged, she waited longer, this time submitting 100 plant samples collected over 18 months to see if the nitrogen levels had increased. If significant nitrogen changes couldn’t be found in the samples, there was no chance that it could be picked up remotely. If it can be picked up remotely, though, it’s important to verify it chemically, Mundorff said.

“We sent off a bunch (of samples) from a little bit later in the project when things were really growing back better, and that’s when we got our awesome results,” she said. Her final samples were taken in August, a year and a half after the body was buried.

Though the findings are still being analyzed, the new results could show that the research team is headed in the right direction. The results could also help raise money to finance the rest of the project.

Mundorff will be replicating in Knoxville much of what she did in Texas on a larger scale. She will collect plant samples for processing and monitor the site with regular photographs. Corcoran, meanwhile, will collect data from additional LiDAR and multi-spectral scans, which the researchers hope to do at least once a year, if not more frequently. Other researchers will monitor the soil with additional samples and keep tabs on new or changing plant species.

The project may also expand beyond UT’s facility.

To prove the technology’s effectiveness when applied in real-world conflicts, researchers want to replicate it in another climate, possibly at the Texas State facility. Options are limited because only a few body farms exist in the U.S.

Mundorff has some ideas, though, and hopes to start a joint experiment in the near future, depending on funding.

Medler, meanwhile, also plans to do an applied version of the UT experiment — that is, using the same technology over known existing mass graves that have yet to be dug up.

Medler hopes the U.S. government will declassify older images of known mass grave sites from satellites and other remote technology. Those baseline images could be compared to new LiDAR and multi-spectral images to see if the mass graves show up.

In the meantime, though he’s thousands of miles away, Medler will continue to serve as a consultant on the project at UT and perhaps help interpret data.

Technology is becoming more advanced and more affordable so quickly that if this team of researchers can prove it works, applying it internationally could happen in “years, not decades,” he said.

“The most exciting part of the project is conceptually making it harder for people to feel like they can get away with these things, even decades later,” Medler said. “Because we will see it.”

Sunday 14 April 2013

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/apr/14/body-of-evidence-ut-using-donated-corpses-in/

continue reading

Sino-Japanese War: Burying atrocities

Through the pale gate of a machinery factory, past a five-storey office building to the south, in a small garden under a towering tree, a few charred sticks of incense stick out of the earth.

Paying respects at grave sites is common during China's Qingming (Tomb-sweeping) Festival, which this year fell on April 4, but this case was different - those paying their respects at this humble garden in Ji'nan, Shandong Province, were Japanese, and this was the site of a mass grave for Chinese victims of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-1945).

Across from the office building, on a small hill, lies a monument with a plaque that reads, "Pipa Mount Mass Grave Monument."

The Japanese who recently showed their respect to the unknown number of Chinese victims buried here as part of a regular tour were lauded in Chinese media; however, it's uncertain as to whether they will be able to continue to make such trips in the future, as the local urban planning bureau recently zoned the area for residential use, potentially paving the way for housing developments on the site.

Of further concern is the fact that other mass graves around the country are also facing similar risks.

Built on a burial ground

The mass grave is located at the formerly State-owned Ji'nan Material Testing Machinery Factory, which was launched in 1952 and later acquired by a private company in 2003. The private enterprise bought the rights to use the land, including the mass grave site, without any attention being given to the history of the location.

Xu Yuquan, a manager from the factory, explained that the land was designated for residential use by urban planning authorities a couple of years ago, adding that the company has been on the hunt for potential property developers since then, the Ji'nan Times reported.

Although the monument at Pipa Mount remains, another smaller monument placed under the tree temporarily disappeared when potential developers judged it as inappropriate for a future residential area, the newspaper reported.

Media reports about the removal of the monument sparked a public outcry over the subjugation of tragic history in favor of commercial interests. The monument was restored on Tuesday.

Although the monument has been restored, unease over the future of the site remains.

Zhang Lei, a staff member from the Ji'nan urban planning bureau, denied there would be any property construction projects at the site in the near future, since the bureau hasn't received any development petitions from the company, which would be a necessary first step.

"The decision to zone the land to be mainly used for residential sites was made because the factory is actually surrounded by residential compounds," she told the Global Times. "The bureau has been implementing long-term plans to gradually move all factories away from the downtown area."

Neglected by the nation

An excavation and identification project launched by the local authorities in 1954 to collect evidence of Japanese war crimes indicated that the rough area of the grave was 1,680 square meters.

According to historical materials, those buried in the grave died gruesome deaths. Some were stabbed to death; some were burned by oil poured on to their bodies, while others were savaged by dogs, to name just a few of the atrocities.

Somewhat ironically the grave and monument, which stand as a testament to the importance of remembering history, have not been identified as a cultural relic, prompting an outpouring of rage online.

Essentially, the local cultural relic authorities didn't know about the grave, a staff member from the Ji'nan Cultural Relic Bureau told the Global Times. When asked about whether the bureau would put the issue on agenda, the person said the bureau doesn't have any data or information about the grave and they still need to collect more data before they can make a decision.

Neglect of mass graves is not limited to Ji'nan. Peng Mingsheng, 75, a researcher who has devoted himself to better protecting mass graves, told the Global Times that his struggle to protect history can be frustrating sometimes.

Peng started to research a mass grave in Chengde, Hebei Province, in 1984, which had originally been under the jurisdiction of the puppet Manchu state, which was controlled by the Japanese during the war. Peng has been pushing to set up a cemetery in order to inform the public of this history, but the local authorities didn't even demarcate the grave site and residences have been scattered around the site for more than 20 years.

He also wrote a book about mass graves around the country, but publishers rejected it, saying it was unlikely to be profitable.

"I've accompanied some 70 groups of Japanese visitors to the (Chengde) grave over the years and they then realize the crimes the Japanese army committed during the war," he said. "The graves made them believe this history. But domestically, it's such a pity authorities don't take it seriously. The sacrifices made by so many Chinese should not be forgotten."

Attempts to preserve

Research and protection of mass graves left behind by the war is far from sufficient, Liu Zheng, a member of the Chinese Association for Cultural Relics, told the Global Times.

"Authorities are not fully aware of its importance (of protecting mass graves), when compared to other considerations such as property construction in the Ji'nan case," he said. "Archaeological research and presentations are desperately needed. The bones should be dug up and displayed, for example, to set up a memorial hall to raise awareness of this history."

Liu pointed out that aside from the mass graves from the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, the most high-profile massacre in Chinese history, few mass graves in China are well-known as they haven't been systematically researched and publicized.

When it comes to the protection of the mass grave in Ji'nan, Zhang said the fact that the land is mainly used for residential sites doesn't have to clash with efforts to protect the mass grave, and local authorities just need to incorporate protection of the site into their planning schemes.

Zeng Yizhi, from the International Committee of Monuments and Sites in China, disagreed, saying that residential buildings shouldn't coexist with the site, and added that even if the grave is arranged as a greenbelt with a monument, judging from past experience, future conflicts are likely when the grave site becomes an inconvenience to nearby residents.

Friday 12 April 2013

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/774428.shtml#.UWco46dzA34

continue reading

French priest documents Shoah mass graves

As we come upon another Holocaust Remembrance Day, we often look to the camps – Auschwitz, Treblinka, Dachau – as the main centers of killing. But across Eastern Europe, more than a million Jews lost their lives to so-called death squads – often shot to death, their bodies unceremoniously piled in mass graves.

Many of those graves stood unmentioned and untouched for many decades, and likely would have remained so, if not for the efforts of a French priest, Father Patrick Desbois.

Many of the witnesses haven’t uttered a word about the slaughter of their neighbors in more than half a century. In this documentary film, a woman explains no one was pushed into the pit of corpses.

"They killed them," she says, "and the Jews fell in."

Elie Wiesel Institute says more than 100 Jews – men, women, children, and elderly people – buried at newly discovered site in forest area near Popricani

Over the past decade, Father Desbois and his colleagues have discovered hundreds of mass graves and interviewed over 3,000 people across Eastern Europe. It’s an attempt to piece together what Desbois calls "the Holocaust by bullets."

Desbois’ organization, Yahad (In Unum), employs 22 people. Fifteen times a year, nine-person teams go from village to village, asking if anyone remembers what happened to the Jews. Desbois says 99% of the time, witnesses are willing to speak and be interviewed on camera.

The stories are chilling, yet Father Desbois wants to make sure the world knows of this under-told chapter of the Holocaust. As a clergyman, he says his role is not to judge.

Desbois knows the clock is ticking. As the number of witnesses tapers, he acknowledges there may be parts of the story that remain untold.

Desbois’ organization has begun researching Roma mass grave sites as well, further illustrating the atrocities of the World War II. Later this year, they hope to unveil an online interactive map, showing the world the final resting place of millions

Monday 8 April 2013

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4364207,00.html

continue reading

Srebrenica: 18 years after the genocide

50 percent of more than 8,000 victims of the Srebrenica Genocide have been identified up to now and 18 years still need to identify all the victims, said mayor of Srebrenica, Camil Durakovic, APA’s correspondent reports from Srebrenica.

The Srebrenica Genocide is one of the bloodiest and painful events of the war in Yugoslavia, 1991-1995. Srebrenica enclave proclaimed by the UN Security Council as "safety zone" in April 1993 has been occupied by the Bosnian Serb Army. In 1995, more than 8,300 Bosnian Muslims were killed there.

The Srebrenica Genocide Memorial, officially known as the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial and Cemetery for the Victims of the 1995 Genocide was erected in 2003. The names of 8372 victims were engraved on the gravestones at the memorial-cemetery complex. The victims also include men at the age of 13-77. “May revenge become justice. May mothers' tears become prayers. That Srebrenica never happens again. To no one and nowhere!” were inscribed on the memorial.

The bodies of 500-600 victims, who were identified, are buried at the cemetery every year. During the war, in order to cover the crime the Bosniaks’ bodies were buried in different places. So the opening of mass graves and identification of remains of the bodies are still being continued. Unidentified remains are being kept in a morgue in Tuzla city.

High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina Valentin Inzko believes that the burial of the remains of corpses is very important for the relatives of genocide victims: “A woman who has lost her children and husband in Srebrenica told me that she could sleep better after her family had been buried.”

Srebrenica Today

Totally 7000 people are living in Srebrenica, where the population was 36666 before the war. The city mayor said that unemployment rate is 43 % in Srebrenica. Thus young people are leaving the city. The local economy had based on the extraction of natural resources before the war. However, the war has destroyed the industrial zone.

"There is no incentive for people to live here," Camil Durakovic said.

Some of the Bosniaks returned Srebrenica and the surrounding areas after the events in 1995. 78% of the population of Srebrenica had been the Bosniaks, 9% - the Serbs before the war. About 4 000 Bosniaks are living in the city now, the rest of the population are the Serbs. The mayor said that the Muslims begun to return the city in 2003 and since then no incidents have been recorded between the Bosniaks and the Serbs.

“Those who committed the atrocities no longer live here and we have no problem with innocent Serbs. We only regret for this genocide and the fact that it resulted in hostility among the people. The war can change nothing. All parties have the same tragedy, because both sides suffered losses.

“The people in Srebrenica have good individual relations, because they have a tradition of coexistence,” – said Dragana Jovanovic, the director of the Friends of Srebrenica non-governmental organization. He notes that politicians take advantage of the Srebrenica events for additional votes. In order to hide any conflict or problem, they raise this problem.

According to Camil Durakovic, today, a Bosniak Muslim woman, who lost her husband and four children in the war, can quietly drink coffee with her Serb neighbor: “Of course, it took time to understand how to coexist. Once, first buses returning to Srebrenica after the war were stoned.”

Issues on punishment for culprits, compensation and property

According to Srebrenica Mayor, the main problem is that most perpetrators of the genocide would never be punished: “The number of perpetrators was large and proving it in the court is difficult. Some commanders signing decrees on murder have been brought to justice, others’ trials are going on, and some of the perpetrators have not been arrested yet.”

Bosniak resident of Priedor city of which Muslim population have mostly suffered during the war Zinaida Khosic considers that the punishment of a perpetrator is important for each victim of the crime: “Not all culprits in murder have been judged. I believe that most of them would not be judged in the Hague.”

International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia recognized the crime committed by the Serbs in Srebrenica as genocide in January, 2012.

The leadership of Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been found guilty of manslaughter in Srebrenica in 2003. However, the Serbs are still calling it as “serious war crime” and rarely use the phrase genocide.

The Serbian Parliament condemned the slaughters in Srebrenica and apologized to the relatives of the victims.

“Compensation has not been considered for the relatives of the Srebrenica victims and the issue on returning properties of the persons displaced due to Bosnia and Herzegovina conflict has been solved,” the city mayor said. Bosniak Fatima Orlovic displaced from Srebrenica is still suing for her lands. A church was constructed on her lands. Fatima Orlovic refuses to live in other place and demands restoration of her property right.

Srebrenica has managed to overcome hostility resulted with the killing of thousands of civilians and confrontation between the two communities. The city continues to bury its killed residents and still hopes the real perpetrators will be punished.

Thursday 28 March 2013

http://en.apa.az/news_srebrenica__18_years_after_the_genocide__190111.html

continue reading