The bones tell the story: The search for Peru's missing
The bones tell the story: The search for Peru's missing
Recent confirmation of some bodies that were "disappeared" in Peru bring new hope to those yearning for closure.
Last Modified: 30 Mar 2013 14:57
Peru last week, forensic anthropologists revealed that for the first time, they had confirmed the identities of three individuals who had been disappeared by government forces during that country's internal armed conflict. During the 1980s, hundreds of people were detained, brought to the Los Cabitos military base, brutally tortured, and were never seen or heard from again.
In 2009, forensic anthropologists searching for the disappeared in Los Cabitos had unearthed the remains of more than 100 people. Virtually all the remains show signs of torture and execution-style deaths. Until now, none of those bodies had been identified.
Using DNA matching between the recovered remains and samples from living relatives of the victims, the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team (EPAF) was able to determine that two of the bodies belonged to individuals who were reported by relatives to have gone missing in the Los Cabitos military base in 1984, and the third in 1985.
The Los Cabitos military base was the centre of counterinsurgency operations in Ayacucho, the birthplace of the Maoist Shining Path insurgency and the epicentre of the war between insurgents and government forces that took the lives of nearly 70,000 Peruvians. Of these, 15,000 were forcibly disappeared, mostly by government forces, with no trace of their bodies to date.
The identifications offer incontrovertible proof that the military systematically detained, tortured and executed hundreds of presumed "subversives" during Peru's "time of fear". To date, no one has been convicted of these crimes, despite the fact that they occurred 30 years ago.
More:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/2013330141926998582.html
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