Searching for the Disappeared
Published July 09, 2009 @ 07:11PM PT
During South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in the 1990s, witnesses often requested help locating the bodies of their missing loved ones, speaking with great pain of the desire to give a proper burial to those who one day simply vanished, and hopefully, finally, find some sort of closure.
The search for missing bodies is a common, long-term quest in societies emerging from violence. South African activists abducted by state security forces in 1985, known as the Pebco Three, were finally found by forensic investigators in 2007. A mass grave containing the remains of 6,000 victims of the 1994 genocide was recently discovered in Rwanda. The Tutsi families are believed to have sought refuge in a nearby church, where they were surrounded by militiamen.
Ukrainian gas workers recently stumbled upon a mass grave with up to 5,000 Jewish Holocaust victims, and a French priest continues to look for more. Cash rewards have been used to solicit information on the graves of those killed during the war in Bosnia.
International teams of forensic investigators continue the search for victims of genocide and mass atrocity, for international and national courts, or simply to assist the surviving families of the victims. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense, EAAF), for example, was first establish to investigate the fates of the disappeared from Argentina's "Dirty War," and now conducts similar missions world-wide.
As a witness told the South African TRC, regarding her son:
"...we do not know what happened to him, we do not know where he is and we would like to have his body brought back to us so that we can bury him, put in the right place, so that all my family can rest in the future days."
[Photo from Pictures of the Year International: Francesco Zizola Magnum Photos / U.S. News & World Report -- "The Killing Fields" Near the southern village of Mahawil, relatives of missing Iraqis gather at the site of one of the largest mass graves uncovered in Iraq. The victims were executed after the failed Shiite uprising in 1991.]
Share this Post
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
StumbleUpon
Delicious
EmailRelated Posts
Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the ideas covered in the posts. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; that contain ad hominem attacks; or that are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion.
Author
-
Michelle became involved in the anti-genocide cause at a young age, and has been involved in various activist endeavors, including the Teach Against Genocide pilot campaigns, ever since.
