I've worked on mass graves AMA

[tessiegirl]

I helped excavate mass graves in a post conflict country...

Ask away!

In the football sized grave, the victims had been dead for around 20 years...

My dh is a forensic archaeologist

I don't think we are too morbid!

No it wasn't the UN. We worked for an independent company who relied on funding from the government or other organisations.

What kind of work did your sister do ghost?

I've thought of working for the police or even a funeral director in the future!

The remains would be taken to the mortuary where our team of anthropologists would establish how much of the remains were left/how intact etc. Check for personal effects. Remove clothing. Then dna would be extracted to hopefully be matched to their family who had provided their blood sample.

Also any forensic evidence that could potentially date the grave would be taken.

The remains would eventually we returned to the family and buried.

My sister worked in the field of human rights, in a west African country where some gruesome atrocities were carried out.

Does she still work in that field ghost?

Not any more tessie.

Wow, what a job, what fascinating insights you must get into other people's lives (& deaths).

Do you get angry with the perpetrators of these atrocities?

Thank you for giving these victims & their families some dignity & peace.

What an important but dreadful job. To see what bastard people are to other human beings. I'm assuming these are mostly murder victims rather than disease.

Yes, all murder victims... I've only ever worked on those of male victims but my husband and our colleagues have worked on those graves with women and children too.

You absolutely find yourself extremely angry at the people who have done these crimes. Even more so when they scream at your husband giving evidence against them that he is a liar... and they are innocent

I remember reading an article in the Guardian about the work of the ICMP in Bosnia and wondering how the victims families could still bear to live along side their neighbours or in the towns where their families were murdered.
I also wondered how they could still believe in a God. My husband recently met some Holocaust survivors and they said they all lost their beliefs in any god.

You mentioned being rightly angry at those perpetrators, do you ever work in these places and find yourself looking at peoples in towns and wondering "what did you do back then"
And did you have a faith that you found was tested by this work. If so do you still believe in God.

Does it make you feel differently about people from the country now?
It's recent enough that the perpetrators haven't been brought to justice so they might still be walking around. Do you let yourself 'go there'?
Have you been back?
What do you do now?

That was probably our work you read about....

The people are usually so poor they havent got much choice but to stay in the same villages. Their male relatives were taken or murdered in the village and buried in mass graves miles away.
I have wondered whether their faith has been affected by the events.
I personally do not have a faith. However, it has brought to light how humans can be so cruel to one another in modern times.

We left the country in 2016. We haven't been back but I would like to visit again some day.
There is still so much more work to do and people to find x

There are definitely people still walking around who know much more than they are letting on and could significantly help in bringing people to justice. Likewise, those who committed the crime. This is why it is so important that work continues.

Have you ever worked with Sue Black?

Did you work In Bosnia? I worked in Croatia on the 10th anniversary of Srebrenica. Awful crimes committed.

No, never worked with Sue Black

Bosnia was one of the countries yes.

What work did you do in Croatia?

I was a holiday rep so nothing quite as worthy as what you were doing!

Ah!

Unfortunately I turned on the tv at the exact moment a clip of the perpetrators shooting their victims in the back of the head 🙁. Terrible times.