Mothers from Central America search for missing kin in Mexico

The mothers knock on the doors of flophouses and morgues. They sift through pictures of prisoners and the dead. Clutching pictures of their own, some from long ago, they ask the same questions, over and over.

Have you seen him? Does she look familiar?

Occasionally, there is a reported sighting. More often, it's another shake of the head, a "Sorry, no." And with that, weariness stooping their shoulders and worry sagging their faces, they board their bus and move on to another town.

By last weekend, these mothers, wives and sisters of missing Central American migrants had already crossed some of Mexico's most dangerous territory in their two-bus caravan.

Following a route often used by migrants northward along the Gulf Coast to the U.S., they had entered the country in the south through Tabasco state. They traveled through Veracruz and Tamaulipas, sites recently of horrific massacres of Central Americans and others, stopping along the way to ask and search — against all the odds wishing for a happy ending.

By the time they finish what has become an annual mission organized by several migrant rights and church groups, they will have traveled to 23 cities and towns in 14 states in 19 days. A total of nearly 3,000 miles.

Aboard the buses, with the lived-in feel of ordered chaos, the women pass the time dozing, chatting, occasionally watching a movie.

Despite their pain, or perhaps because of it, they find friendship. The Nicaraguans share stories of their experiences during their country's civil war, telling of relatives killed or forced into armies; the Hondurans recount tales of their nation's utter, violent poverty that fuels one of the world's highest homicide rates and drives their children to seek lives elsewhere.

Emotions soar and fall. The women joke and tease one another and laugh. Then, suddenly, one remembers the son she is missing and breaks into sobs and another moves to her side to comfort her.

Another nine hours through hot, dusty cactus fields brought them here to Saltillo, the capital of Coahuila state, where the top leader of the notorious Zetas paramilitary cartel was slain by government forces last month. By all accounts, it is the Zetas who most routinely and viciously prey on the migrants, thousands of whom have gone missing in recent years — kidnapped, killed, pressed into involuntary labor by drug traffickers, or simply lost to poverty and desperation.

Dilma Pilar Escobar last heard from her daughter, Olga, in January 2010. Olga had taken off from their home in Progreso, Honduras, leaving behind five children, with the plan of reaching the United States. Like so many others, her idea was to earn a little money, make things a little easier for her mother and her children.

Now Escobar is raising her grandchildren, listening to their questions every night about when their mother might come home. She is running out of answers.

"I've looked in hospitals, in morgues," said Escobar, 55. "We see so much about what's happening in Mexico on TV. It puts a lot in your head."

Escobar was inspired to make the trip in part by a local radio program that attempts to help families with missing relatives.

"It gave me the push to come here," said the woman with dark, unsmiling eyes, grasping an 8-by-10 photo of Olga that hangs from her neck on a green cord.

In each city or town, the mothers stage a public event to make their presence known. A Mass. A march. Here in Saltillo, they converged on the downtown Plaza de Armas, the pale-blue-and-white that adorns all Central American flags fluttering in the breeze ahead of the slow march of mothers. They hung their photos of loved ones on clotheslines at the center of the square.

The women — about 40 on this year's caravan — sleep on cots in churches or in "migrant houses," shelters set up by a number of communities, where they also receive donated meals.

"We are facing a humanitarian tragedy," Tomas Gonzalez, a Franciscan friar who runs a shelter in Tabasco, told the women. "Mexico has become a cemetery for migrants."

In August 2010, 72 migrants from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and a handful of other countries were slain execution-style, hands tied behind backs, shot once in the head, in Tamaulipas state, which borders Texas. Among the youngest was 15-year-old Yedmi Victoria Castro of El Salvador. The Zetas were presumed responsible. Dozens more bodies were found in the same region in the months that followed.

Not a week goes by, it seems, without fresh reports of hidden graves and unidentified dead. But the Mexican government has been slow to recognize the epidemic of missing persons, only this year moving to toughen legislation and expand the collection of DNA samples and other data.

Tuesday 6 November 2012

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-moms-caravan-20121106,0,6213294.story

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More than 40 corpses subjected to Sandy’s wrath inside Bellevue Hospital's morgue

Not even the dead could rest in peace during Hurricane Sandy’s merciless rage.

More than 40 corpses were subjected to the superstorm’s wrath inside Bellevue Hospital's morgue on Oct. 29. Staff in the medical examiner’s office were trying to move the bodies to higher compartments -- while water poured into the First Avenue flagship city hospital -- when firefighters ordered them to evacuate.

The 44 deceased were in body bags -- all but eight of them awaiting a city burial on Hart Island -- Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner's office, said Monday. All had died of natural causes.

It would be a week before staff could get back into the office to assess the storm's toll on the dead.

A memo obtained Monday by the Daily News outlining healthcare union DC 37's gripes charged that Bellevue's "basement and morgue area flooding was so extensive that the bodies in the morgue have in effect drowned, unrefrigerated and decomposing."

Borakove conceded the unexpected high waters did seep inside many of the body bags during the storm and power outage, but she disputed a union claim that its workers were put at risk.

“Our office took the bodies out yesterday, after the water had been pumped out of the morgue, placed them in dry bags and safely moved them to our Queens and Brooklyn medical examiner offices,” Borakove said. It took four hours for staff to make the transfers and check that all the ID tags were correct Monday.

“I have never experienced this in my 25 years,” Borakove said.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/40-corpses-subjected-sandy-wrath-article-1.1197172#ixzz2BRz1VevZ

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Kashmir women seek justice in cases of disappeared people

Srinagar, Indian Administered KASHMIR: For over two decades, it has been an endless wait for families in the Indian Administered Region of Kashmir.

Missing what they fondly call “their dear ones” these families have experienced what they describe as “immense pain” for family members who have disappeared from the region as the unexplained silence of India’s government officials and the denial of justice in the cases continue.

What is left of the cases now are many unanswered questions.

On August 30, 2012 on the eve of International Disappearances Day, numerous Kashmir families took a pledge that they would fight the legal battle to prove that enforced disappearances in Kashmir have occurred over the past two decades. Women who have husbands or sons who are part of the ‘The Disappeared’ have also promised they would continue to work and not shy away from bringing justice forward.

Even though detailed documents of proof are currently available through the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) in Srinagar that point to crimes involving security forces in Kashmir, the cases of those who suffered under enforced disappearance has met little formal investigation.

APDP is one of the organizations that is championing the cause of disappearance in Kashmir. Working to document the number of widows who have been impacted during years of conflict in the region, the organization is focused on human rights for victims who have often not been able to trust local authorities or the larger Indian government for help.

“Enforced Disappearance is abduction or kidnapping, carried out by State agents, or organized groups and individuals who act with State support or tolerance, in which the victim ‘disappears’,” outlines the APDP. “Authorities neither accept responsibility for the dead, nor account for the whereabouts of the victim… ….Increasingly the international community considers Enforced Involuntary Disappearance as a specific human rights violation and a crime against humanity,” continues the APDP.

Wearing white head bands with “Stop Disappearances” written on them in black, relatives with a majority of them women, came together on August 30 to form a ‘sit-in’ at Pratap Park in the Lal Chowk section of Kashmir’s capital city of Srinagar. This was their way to pay tribute and to bring international attention to those who have been subject to a denial of their rights under enforced disappearances.

Along with activists and volunteers, the memorial rally moved to land donated by APDP for erecting a statue which will be dedicated to all ‘The Disappeared’ in the valley.

“We have come here with a cause. I lost all my four sons to conflict. I was fortunate to get the dead bodies of two sons and others two sons are disappeared. I tried to search for my two sons everywhere but of no avail,” outlines Taja Begum, an elderly woman who has come to Srinagar from Kashmir’s northern mountainous Bandipora district to participate in the sit-in.

“I have no wishes. All I want is that before I’ll die I should be able at least to know whether they are alive or dead,” she said of her missing family members.

Begum is one of the thousands of Kashmiri victim families whose members are lost in the midpoint between officially missing and confirmed dead.

In a region where numerous police reports can be left with little to no official investigation, impacts for tracking crime in Kashmir falls on the homes of those most vulnerable. It does not help that the situation surrounding ‘The Disappeared’ has included a complex group of quarreling political forces in the region who have been juggling power for over the past twenty years. The players include regular security forces – the Indian Army, the Border Security Force (BSF) and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), as well as moving paramilitary groups in the region.

“…More than one hundred cases of detainees disappearing in the custody of the security forces have been documented by human rights groups since the conflict began,” said Human Rights Watch in a detailed report made over 15 years ago in 1996. Today the situation for many women has caused them and their families to get caught in the crossfires.

Even with continued pressure from global human rights organizations as well as attorneys, since the year 1996, government transparency and accountability has not been forthcoming.

“Lawyers in Kashmir have filed more than 15,000 habeas corpus petitions since 1990 calling on state authorities to reveal the whereabouts of detainees and the charges against them. However, in the vast majority of cases, the authorities have not responded, and the petitions remain pending in the courts,” said Human Rights Watch in 1996. “Even when the High Court has ordered state authorities to produce detainees in court or release those against whom no charges have been brought, state and security force officials have refused to comply. Lawyers have also filed petitions charging officials with contempt for non-compliance, but these petitions have also received no response,” added the 1996 report.

Today in 2012 the situation has not much improved, the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) is now working with over 300 families who have relatives who are still unaccounted for. Many are husbands or sons who were taken away under unexplained arrests.

To answer the need for families to find answers, the APDP has demanded publicly that the government of India should implement all recommendations of the United Nations Universal Periodic Review-2 (UPR2), which calls for all violations of human rights in the region to be fully investigated.

“We have documented cases in [the] district Srinagar and out of all cases, almost 82. 25 per cent, have eyewitness accounts of the direct involvement of the security forces. Despite having all the first-hand accounts, no action has been taken against the perpetrators,” said Parveena Ahanger, President of the APDP. “Instead, the criminals are getting awards for killings and other human rights violation[s] in the name of ‘exemplary work’,” she added.

A formal petition by APDP partner, the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), was also made with APDP to the Jammu & Kashmir State Human Rights Commission branch of India’s National Human Rights Commission. It outlines 507 unsolved cases.

This isn’t the first petition. In 2011 JKCCS asked for the Jamu Kashmir Police Force to investigate other cases, but no response from the police came forward.

Out of the recent 507 systematically documented reports of disappearance, 369 of the missing are from the district of Baramulla, along with 138 cases from the Bandipora district.

Under a situation where families face what might include torture and extra-judicial killings in their family, stress and grief for the women who have been left behind is undeniable. Psychological trauma may also include episodes of heightened depression and chronic wishes of suicide. Children of fathers who have gone missing also often face the similar psychological fate as there mothers.

When a husband has not been declared dead, nor alive, by local and/or national Indian authorities, their wives exist in a prolonged twilight that forces life to stay in a shallow limbo. Even after many years these ‘half-widows’ cannot remarry easily.

While India’s law allows a widow to file for divorce after her husband has been missing for 4 years, half-widows in Kashmir must also prove that their husband has never been involved in any actions that might be interpreted as ‘politically suspect’. Because half-widows are denied the full rights of other widows, they often live in poverty without the usual 100,000 rupees assistance given to widows by the Indian government.

35-year-old Tahira Begum’s husband, Tariq Ahmed Rather, has been one of those missing since 2002. Like other half-widows Tahira has been struggling on two fronts — trying to earn a living to survive without her husband as the only head-of-household; and fighting an ongoing legal battle to seek transparency and justice for her family.

“I don’t know whether my husband is dead or alive,” Begum shared during a tearful interview with WNN – Women News Network.

“Enforced disappearance is one of the worst human rights violations and a large number of people throughout the world are affected by this war crime,” outlined Tahira. “As a civil society, it is imperative for all the organizations who are working for a cause and governments to forge solidarity in bringing to an end the practice of enforced disappearance.”

According to JKCCS, a low estimate of disappearance cases in Kashmir currently shows numbers reaching up to 8,000+ mysteriously missing people with more than 1,500 half-widows now living in the Jammu and Kashmir region. Numerous victims continue to say that their helplessness has been compounded, rather than addressed, by the legal and administrative remedies currently available to them.

“We have sought SHRC’s intervention [the State Human Rights Commission which is the regional part of the larger India's National Human Rights Commission] to probe all the enlisted cases of disappearances. The victim families of these disappeared persons fear that their loved ones might be buried in some unmarked graves across Jammu and Kashmir,” adds Tahira Begum.

Adding her wish that families of relatives who have gone missing can get India’s government to carry out investigations at these unmarked graves by using all modern available means of investigation, Begum outlined that investigations using DNA testing and other forensic methods could answer many questions.

“The government of Kashmir has rejected wide-scale DNA testing of bodies in thousands of unmarked graves despite pleas by the families of those who disappeared during two decades of fighting in the restive region,” says Forensic Magazine, a bimonthly publication that brings the most accurate and up-to-date information on forensic science available to the public.

New technologies for DNA forensics have been expanding greatly. Rapid DNA Analysis Systems have been developed to enable law enforcement agencies to process DNA samples with amazingly fast results, in 84 minutes. These and other new forensics technologies are now available to aid in the mystery of mass graves worldwide.

JKCCS claims today that there are more than 2,000 unmarked graves and mass graves in three districts of northern Kashmir. Their fate and the fate of their families may be dependent on DNA driven investigations.

“A police investigation in 2011 by the Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) found 2,730 bodies dumped into unmarked graves at 38 sites in north Kashmir,” recently outlined Human Rights Watch in World Report 2012: India. “At least 574 were identified as the bodies of local Kashmiris. The government had previously said that the graves held unidentified militants, most of them Pakistanis whose bodies had been handed over to village authorities for burial. Many Kashmiris believe that some graves contain the bodies of victims of enforced disappearances,” continued the 2012 report.

Three years ago, Dr. Angana Chatterji and other members of the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir brought forward a witness who’s testimony cannot be denied. When 68-year-old gravedigger, Atta Mohammad from Chehal Bimyar, Kashmir, shared his compelling first-hand witness account from the Baramulla district the case of extra-judicial killings may have been brought to light.

Stating clearly during his testimony at the Tribunal, Bimyar admitted that he had personally been involved in the burial of 203 bodies between 2002-2006: “I have been terrorised by this task that was forced upon me. My nights are tormented and I cannot sleep, the bodies and graves appear and reappear in my dreams. My heart is weak from this labour. I have tried to remember all this… the sound of the earth as I covered the graves… bodies and faces that were mutilated… mothers who would never find their sons. My memory is an obligation. My memory is my contribution. I am tired, I am so very tired.”

Under years of documents and legal petitions, as the year 2013 approaches, Indian government officials in Jammu and Kashmir have now promised to start a formal process toward investigation. But the prosecution of numerous cases may find many challenges to reach even a measured amount of success.

“…the identification and prosecution of perpetrators will require the cooperation of army and federal paramilitary forces. These forces in the past, have resisted fair investigations and prosecutions, claiming immunity under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and section 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code,” says Human Rights Watch in their latest 2012 World Report on India.

‘The Disappeared’ in Indian Administered Kashmir has been been part of a decades long story that has asked for government involvement to solve the crimes. At the very bottom of the crimes though the families, especially its women, are its ongoing victims.

“If my husband is alive I want to see him,” says half-widow Tahira Begum. “If he has been killed let authorities hand over his body to me,” Begum added.

Tuesday 6 November 2012

http://www.trust.org/trustlaw/news/kashmir-women-seek-justice-in-cases-of-disappeared-people

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Migrants killed by the elements identified by the personal items left behind

TUCSON - On a quest for a better life, migrants south of the border risk it all in their trek into the U.S. Their dreams are often cut short in an attempt to get here.

A cultural anthropology grad student at the University of Arizona, Robin Reineke, began volunteering time at the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office. She fields calls from families worried their child or parent may be lying on the examination table.

She began collecting names from all over the world to form a list of people who may have been killed by the harsh Arizona desert climates. The result was the Pima County Missing Migrant Project.

When they die they leave behind personal items. It's an important part of the puzzle Robin is trying to solve.

"You can sense that there's a lot of hope for this next chapter of their lives," Reineke said. "To me it reminds me of going off to college for the first time. You carry in your backpack all your favorite stuff."

They often die with the essentials like money, and the clothes on their back, but some of their items like rosaries and jewelry reveal a more personal story.

"This is Orlando Bloom on the back of his mirror here. So maybe he was a fan," said Reineke.

It's a never-ending job. Despite reports of illegal immigration going down, Reineke says the number of bodies the medical examiner sees is holding steady.

"Right now we have about a total of 700 unidentified bodies. So that 700, I am comparing to the missing and people that are reported missing from their family members... I have about 1,300 of those reports," said Reineke.

The difficult part for Reineke is identifying a foreign national, especially when they have been exposed to the elements.

"Sometimes the items, you know the bracelet he had or a wedding ring, for example, can be the only thing the family recognizes. The person doesn't have a face anymore."

The Missing Migrant Project recently became the only entity in the country to be allowed to enter known missing migrants into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs). It's expediting the process in alerting families of their loved one's whereabouts.

Tuesday 6 November 2012

http://www.kvoa.com/news/migrants-killed-by-the-elements-identified-by-the-personal-items-left-behind/

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Disappearances on the rise

Police have reported that the number of disappearances and recovering of bodies is on the rise in the country. According to a report issued by the Police Media Unit, the body of a 25-year-old youth, Dammika Bandara of Maha Medagama, Thalathuoya who had been reported missing was recovered by the Police at Kalukella Idama, Mahamedagama on 4 November.

Another dead body was found on the beach near the Wadduwa Railway Station. The deceased has been identified as Nihal Ranjith Rajapakshe who had disappeared on 2 November after he went to Kalutara town to buy clothes.

Police have recovered another body stuck among two stones near the reservoir behind Weheragala Padaviya. According to investigations it was a headless body. The T-shirt he was wearing was blue and black, the words ‘Sri Lanka Army: 1949-2009 60th Anniversary’ was printed on it.

Another body was found in a pool of water at Dimbulduwa, Ambalangoda. Police have recovered a mobile phone, National ID and pair of shoes believed to belong to the deceased. He has been identified as Dinesh Kumara (25) of Ahungalla. Another male body was recovered floating on the Kalu Ganga, near the Jumma Mosque, Kalutara on the 4th . The lower part of the body had been eaten by some animals.

Tuesday 6 november 2012

http://www.ceylontoday.lk/51-16241-news-detail-disappearances-on-the-rise.html

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9 tsunami victims’ remains misidentified, given to wrong families

A Japanese newspaper has uncovered that there was a misidentification of the bodies of nine tsunami disaster victims, and thus returned to the wrong families. Japan’s National Police Agency told the Yomiuri Shimbun that in their efforts to return the remains to relatives looking for closure as quickly as possible, they did not allow enough time for a thorough examination of dental and DNA records.

The authorities say eight those incorrectly identified were from different towns in Iwate Prefecture, consisting of one man and seven women, all in ages from their 60s to 90s. The ninth was found in Miyagi Prefecture, and police say it was given to family looking for a 78 year old man almost immediately after the March 11th, 2011 disasters. In the first month alone after the earthquake and tsunami, roughly 13,000 bodies were taken to makeshift morgues in order to be identified. Police officers, doctors, and dentists were among those confronting the task, but there was often little power or water supplies, and the greatest hurdle was that so many dental and medical records were lost in the tsunami‘s waves.

Because of these circumstances, some bodies were given to families who insisted that they had found and identified their missing relatives. The misidentifications were discovered when the real families of those given away came to police after seeing photos taken of those who were at the morgues. The issue was corrected and the police of Iwate had given apologies to all the families involved by August, as well as got the remains back to their correct relatives.

Tuesday 6 November 2012

http://japandailypress.com/9-tsunami-victims-remains-misidentified-given-to-wrong-families-0617906

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