Statement on Military Mass Grave Exhumations
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
August 5, 2003
STATEMENT ON MILITARY MASS GRAVE EXHUMATIONS
Dear Editor,
Television newscast viewers last Thursday (July 24) were treated to the latest "discovery" of a mass grave in Majayjay, Laguna, by the military and claimed to be the skeletal remains of deep penetration agents (DPA) summarily executed by the NPA.
While the claim of the AFP may be true, the military owes it unto itself and to the whole nation, to document as fully as possible this mass-grave situation. This is necessary to build up their case; to identify the individual victims now represented by their skeletal remains and associated personal effects; to ascertain the manner of their deaths; and to ultimately relinquish the individual remains to their rightful-claimants for their final burial.
The TV footages however showed a haphazardly dug-up pit and soldiers obviously untrained in systematic exhumation and recovery efforts, carelessly picking off skeletal remains and their associated grave items from a water-logged muddy pit with heavy sharp pointed shovels; and disarticulating (separating) important parts of the skeleton needed for individual identification (such as the skull) from their natural assemblage, for media photography. The footages also showed soldiers and media practitioners mindlessly trampling all over the gravesite.
The above activities contaminate the "crime scene" and might have already compromised the integrity and usefulness of the very evidence that the military could use in its case against the perpetrators. It may have confused the exhumation context to the extent that efforts at individual identification of the remains might have been already undermined or made much more difficult even for an accomplished forensic anthropologist. Such activities often result in eighter loss or further destruction of grave materials, leading to further loss of information still embedded in what initially were intact whole skeletons and their associated personal effects. Needless to say such eventualities would detract from the most earnest efforts to positively identify the individual victims and to ascertain the manner and circumstances of their deaths.
Only recently, we have analyzed five sets of skeletal remains exhumed by the military last February from a mass grave in Makilala, North Cotabato, which was passed off to the local media as those of former DPA executed by the NPA. Our investigations confirmed only one to be a result of NPA-DPA execution. The four interred much later in the same site, were most likely victims of military campaign in 1988.
We urge the military to safeguard its credibility by ensuring that similar efforts in the future would be attended by: systematic exhumation efforts; maximal documentation; retrieval and preservation of skeletal remains, and their associated grave materials and their thorough and competent analysis by credible and independent forensic experts. Without such safeguards, the military, the victims of human rights violations and the whole nation will lose out from such mindless, and for some quarters, suspicious efforts.
(Sgd) JEROME B. BAILENProfessor
University of the Philippines, Department of Anthropology
Diliman, Quezon City
Tel. 4355056
(Sgd) LOUIE G. CRISMOSecretary General
Families of Victims of Involuntary Disappearance (FIND)
Telefax 4350068
Tel. 9210069
