Bones Don't Lie: Part 1

For me, it is incredibly hard to fathom the violence that people endure in genocides and other crimes against humanity. But perhaps even more than that, I can’t even possibly understand how they must feel when the people they love are just gone. 

Disappeared.

And the ones left behind have nothing physical of those loved ones left.

This video addresses that. Please watch it.  You might even want to vote for it, if the voting is still open.

Bones Don't Lie and Don't Forget | Kim Munsamy from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.

Here’s what the director, Kim Munsamy, writes about the film:

After 2 decades the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG) remains dedicated to the work of listening to bones that "don't lie and don't forget", telling their stories in tribunal spaces, to their families who have waited decades to lay to rest their loved ones and to a country in which the past is always present. The afterlife of the conflict demands that the living communicate with those who have passed away in order to pursue justice and re-member a complex and fragmented history. FAFG's work demands us to not only revisit history, but to interrogate it, to reopen chapters perhaps deemed closed or "resolved", and to name, one by one, the thousands who were detained and disappeared during the internal armed conflict in Guatemala.

If you're not familar with what happened in Guatemala in the 1980s here is more information from the Holocaust Museum Houston website:

They write:

"Civil war existed in Guatemala since the early 1960s due to inequalities existing in the economic and political life. In the 1970s, the Maya began participating in protests against the repressive government, demanding greater equality and inclusion of the Mayan language and culture. In 1980, the Guatemalan army instituted “Operation Sophia,” which aimed at ending insurgent guerrilla warfare by destroying the civilian base in which they hid. This program specifically targeted the Mayan population, who were believed to be supporting the guerilla movement. 

Over the next three years, the army destroyed 626 villages, killed or “disappeared” more than 200,000 people and displaced an additional 1.5 million, while more than 150,000 were driven to seek refuge in Mexico. Forced disappearance policies included secretly arresting or abducting people, who were often killed and buried in unmarked graves. In addition, the government instituted a scorched earth policy, destroying and burning buildings and crops, slaughtering livestock, fouling water supplies and violating sacred places and cultural symbols. Many of these actions were undertaken by the army, specifically through special units known as the Kaibiles, in addition to private death squads, who often acted on the advice of the army. The U.S. government often supported the repressive regimes as a part of its anti-Communist policies during the Cold War. The violence faced by the Mayan people peaked between 1978 and 1986. Catholic priests and nuns also often faced violence as they supported the rights of the Mayan people”.

And finally, after thirty years, this past January Guatemalan General Efrain Rios Montt was indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity.  The trial continues, as far as I can tell.