Page 11 - ATD27Febr2016

WORLD NEWS A11
Saturday 27 February 2016

Colombia digs up past in former rebel stronghold

Forensic workers unearth unidentified bodies at the cemetery plaud the effort but say Macarena region. almost no effort to iden-
in La Macarena, Colombia, Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2016. Criminal the scope of Colombia’s The cemetery in La Ma- tify the dead or investigate
investigators are digging up bodies in the cemetery of this former bloodletting requires more carena has long been a how they were killed.
stronghold of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. resources. Casallas is one symbol for leftist critics of Such distinctions matter lit-
of just two dozen forensic the government. Its loca- tle to Jesus Antonio Hernan-
(AP Photo/Fernando Vergara) anthropologists employed tion, a few feet downslope dez, who for three decades
by the chief prosecutor’s from a military base be- was the village’s gravedig-
JOSHUA GOODMAN sion of a prosecutor before office, whose job it is to sift longing to the elite Omega ger. During the worst of the
Associated Press samples can be sent to through more than 21,000 Task Force, one of the larg- bloodbath starting in 2002,
LA MACARENA, Colombia Bogota for DNA analysis, unmarked tombs and est recipients of U.S. coun- after earlier peace efforts
(AP) — The stench of death and hopefully, a match graves nationwide con- terinsurgency aid, fueled broke down and the gov-
envelops the makeshift with an expanding genetic taining so-called NNs, or no tales that it held untold ernment launched a ma-
morgue as Diego Casallas database of thousands of names, the term used to numbers of civilians killed jor offensive, helicopters
uses a box cutter to slash Colombians whose loved describe the anonymous by the military and dressed would unload as many as
open a mud-caked body ones disappeared during dead. up as guerrillas to hide hu- 10 corpses a day on the
bag. The unidentified re- decades of fighting. “If we keep going at the man rights abuses. Colom- base’s airstrip, which is the
mains are all but decom- If the detective work suc- current pace, Colombia is bian media took to calling dusty jungle crossroads’
posed after more than a ceeds on a large enough going to be looking for our it the world’s largest mass only paved surface.
decade in the ground, but scale, it could go a long disappeared for at least grave. “It was very sad,” Hernan-
there are valuable clues: a way in helping Colombians the next three genera- It is unknown how many of dez said, wiping away
pair of brown work boots heal from the bloodshed tions,” said Pablo Cala, an the dead were civilians. In sweat as he wielded a
and a camouflaged back- and regain confidence in activist who has helped au- a fatal omission that speaks spade helping undoing his
pack. the rule of law. thorities hand over to their to longstanding institution- burial work. “People were
“These are objects that In October, as part of a families the remains of 108 alized neglect and cor- buried without their loved
can lead to an eventual breakthrough in three- victims of the 2,292 people ruption in Colombia, au- ones. I just put them in a
identification,” says Casal- year-old peace talks, gov- buried anonymously in the thorities at the time made bag and interred them.”q
las, a forensic anthropolo- ernment negotiators and
gist, as he calmly inspects the Revolutionary Armed
a femur bone with the cold Forces of Colombia agreed
detachment required of his to establish a high-level
profession. As a deal to end agency to search for the
Colombia’s half-century bodies of the estimated
conflict nears, this lonely 45,000 people who were
cemetery in a former rebel believed to have been
stronghold has become slain by one side or the oth-
a hive of activity. The past er and whose bodies were
two weeks, criminal investi- discarded without record
gators have been digging during the conflict. An ad-
up the dead in hopes of ditional 220,000 people are
identifying 464 people bur- confirmed to have been
ied in unmarked paupers’ killed.
graves. So far, they’ve dis- Authorities for now are con-
interred 66. It’s slow work. centrating the search in
Every exhumation is docu- the Sierra de la Macarena,
mented by forensic an- a wild, Taiwan-sized region
thropologists, topographers long disputed by govern-
and crime scene photog- ment troops and the FARC.
raphers under the supervi- Human rights groups ap-