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Bodies of Evidence

Case studies

The disappeared

Where are the Guatemalan disappeared?

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, large numbers of mainly indigenous people who were opposed to the Guatemalan government were executed by the army or simply disappeared. Since then, clandestine graves have been found throughout the Guatemalan highlands, and a group called Physicians for Human Rights works with local forensic anthropologists to exhume bodies, examine the bones and establish who the victims were and how they died. Unless the facts are known, families cannot give their loved ones a proper burial and those responsible for these illegal executions cannot be brought to justice.

A great deal is at stake for the perpetrators – and the scientists are risking their own lives to defend human rights. In February 2002, two Guatemalan forensic anthropology organisations received death threats demanding that the exhumations stop and warning that if forensic scientists continued their work, their families would 'soon be burying their bones and those of their children'.

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The Romanovs

Vladimir Lenin

Taung Child

St Clare

The Inuit Women

Witch burial

Barber surgeon

Slave grave

Turin shroud

The disappeared

Medieval coffins