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RIGHTS-GUATEMALA: Naming the
"Disappeared"
By Danilo Valladares
GUATEMALA CITY (IPS) - Through the "My Name Is Not
XX" campaign, the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology
Foundation is working to identify the remains of
thousands of victims who were forcibly disappeared
during the country's 1960-1996 armed conflict, by
inviting their relatives to provide DNA samples.
Ads reading "My Name Is Not XX: A Sample of DNA from My
Relatives Can Identify Me. Call Phone Number 1598" have
been posted in buses in the capital to draw attention to
the campaign that was launched in November.
In Guatemala, where an estimated 45,000 people fell
victim to forced disappearance, overwhelmingly at the
hands of the armed forces and allied paramilitary
militias, graves containing the remains of unidentified
people are simply marked "XX".
According to the 1999 report by the United
Nations-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission (CEH),
the 36-year civil war between government forces and
leftwing guerrillas claimed around 200,000 lives, mainly
rural indigenous villagers killed or forcibly abducted
by the state security forces and the local civilian
self-defence patrols (known as PACs) set up by the army.
The victims included at least 45,000 people who were
forcibly disappeared and buried in secret mass graves,
local cemeteries or clandestine graves on the grounds of
military bases.
The killings peaked during the early to mid-1980s
scorched earth campaign, when hundreds of native
villages were wiped out.
"My brother Rubén Amílcar Farfán, 38, was illegally
seized on May 15, 1984. Since then, we have been working
to find out what happened to him, but knocking on
different doors and pleading for information has not
been enough to get the authorities to tell us where he
is," Aura Elena Farfán, head of the Association of
Family Members of the Detained-Disappeared of Guatemala
(FAMDEGUA), told IPS.
"Our family members, who were 'disappeared' or
slaughtered in massacres and buried in clandestine
cemeteries, do not deserve, as human beings, to remain
'XX'," she added.
The activist, along with her mother and another brother,
had DNA samples taken by the Guatemalan Forensic
Anthropology Foundation to help in the search for Rubén.
Jorge Molina, the coordinator of the campaign, told IPS
that the main goal of the project is to bring dignity to
the victims and a sense of closure to their families by
locating the remains and making it possible for their
relatives to hold a proper burial in line with their
beliefs.
Stressing the importance of having DNA samples from
relatives, he explained the complexity of the task of
identifying bodies merely from their dental records,
clothing, jewellery or specific features like broken
bones.
"The clothes of many victims were changed, and other
victims were taken to different places where it was
impossible to identify them in terms of location, which
is why we are resorting to comparing DNA samples," he
said.
So far, around 2,000 people have come to the
Foundation's laboratory to provide samples.
At least 12 victims have been identified so far using
this method, and there are high expectations with regard
to what can be accomplished.
Molina said graves in the potter's field at the La
Verbena cemetery in the capital would be exhumed this
month. There are more than 3,000 bodies buried there as
"XX", "889 of whom we believe to have been victims of
forced disappearance between 1979 and 1983."
Missing children - a different story
Although a significant proportion of the unidentified
bodies in secret mass graves are those of children, many
youngsters were orphaned as well.
Early this year, the Guatemalan government reported that
it had found evidence substantiating what human rights
groups have long held: that children whose parents were
murdered during the civil war were often taken to
orphanages and put up for adoption. Many were adopted by
couples from the United States, as well as from Europe.
Different groups have been working to locate these
missing children. Evelyn Blanco, head of the
International Centre for Human Rights Research (CIIDH),
told IPS that most of the children who had been searched
for and located were found to be alive.
"We have located 450 people who went missing as children
during the armed conflict, and most of them have been
reunited with their (biological) families," she said.
According to the CEH, the victims of forced
disappearance included 5,000 children.
Blanco said the campaign that the Guatemalan Forensic
Anthropology Foundation is carrying out with support
from the European Union is extremely important in the
ongoing effort to identify the victims of the armed
conflict.
She added that the CIIDH is currently involved in the
process of obtaining DNA samples from six Guatemalans
who were adopted during the civil war and are living in
Italy and Switzerland.
"We have located over 60 cases in Europe," she said.
National commission
Human rights groups are pushing for passage of a law
that would create a National Commission to Search for
the Disappeared, which would have its own budget and a
15-year mandate to carry out its work, as well as a
databank to facilitate the effort to track down and
identify missing individuals.
The aim is to centralise the efforts and the assistance
given to the families of the victims of forced
disappearance.
But the draft law has been stalled in Congress since
2006.
"I believe that giving a decent burial to all massacre
victims is extremely necessary in the search for the
truth, because most of them were stripped of their
identity," the head of the National Coordinating
Committee of Guatemalan Widows (CONAVIGUA), Rosalina
Tuyuc, told IPS.
"Sadly, the National Reparations Programme has not
provided funds for identifying all of the victims of
massacres," said Tuyuc, who belongs to the Cakchiquel
indigenous community.
The Programme, created in April 2003 with a budget of 35
million dollars a year, is a set of policies, projects
and specific actions to compensate and provide
recognition and dignity to victims of the armed conflict
and their families.
But Tuyuc said it is not enough merely to identify the
victims, and that justice must be done as well.
"To keep history from repeating itself, a precedent must
be set in all of the cases, not only the ones involving
forced disappearance, but also the cases of massacre and
genocide, so that not only the material authors but the
intellectual ones as well can be brought to trial," she
said. |
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