The Aftermath: Exhuming Mass Graves

by Michelle

Published January 21, 2009 @ 07:00PM PT

A recent installment of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's "Voices on Genocide Prevention" podcast raises several interesting issues surrounding post-conflict recovery --- specifically, the tension between the procedures of international justice mechanisms and the needs of victims.

In the interview, forensic anthropologist Jose Pablo Baraybar discusses the exhumation of mass grave in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo:

"I am a believer that forensic work is very important to put them in the record straight. It is very important in terms of making people remember. It's very important to have it as a physical witness, as something you can actually see, breathe, touch, I mean, perceive."

The exhumations, done for the UN, served as evidence gathering for international prosecutions. But while recognizing the importance of this role, Baraybar expresses frustration over the lack of consideration for victims and issues of restitution:

"Because all the people they exhumed, they were looking only for categorical identification, meaning, okay, let's say Kosovar or Albanian because of an ID card, like in Srebrenica or something. I mean, an ID card, this and that, shot in the head or whatever, multiple gunshot wounds, in a grave, etcetera. So these were just numbers.

That person, that John Doe that we're recovering there, that was very practical and useful as evidence, had a name and had a family looking for it."

In 2002, Baraybar created the Office of Missing Persons and Forensics (OMPF) at the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) to deal with the issue of individual victim identification.

The rules and procedures of the court system are, beyond a doubt, critically important, and lend credibility and weight to verdicts that would be absent from a lax "kangaroo court." However, as Baraybar remarks, the personal and emotional needs of survivors and victims should not be overlooked. (It's nice to see that, at least with OMPF, the UN is responding.)

[Photo from TampaBay.com: A Bosnian Muslim woman weeps near the coffin of her brother, exhumed from a mass grave, during a funeral this year for 33 victims who were killed in the war that ended 13 years ago.]