The bones say, 'J'accuse.'
Written: Mar 29 '06 (Updated Oct 31 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: vivid descriptions of places and conditions; a likeable, determined, principled and deeply compassionate author
Cons: detailed accounts of exhumations and autopsies, so perhaps not for the faint-hearted or queasy-stomached
The Bottom Line: A fascinating account of a young forensic anthropologist's work in getting human bones to 'tell their story' of mass murder and genocide in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
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| jc_hall's Full Review: The Bone Woman: A Forensic Anthropologist'S Search... |
Subtitled ‘A Forensic Anthropologist’s Search for Truth in Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo’, this non-fiction account of several years in the working life of Clea Koff is a riveting read for anyone with an interest in forensics or the genocides that took place in recent history.
Born to parents who are documentary filmmakers focused on human rights issues, Clea Koff was a little girl with rather unusual interests. She delighted in collecting animal bones and had the unnerving hobby of burying dead birds in plastic bags only to dig them up later to try and determine when they skeletonized.
Halfway through a dig in archaeology school, she decided that it was the exhumation of the recently-murdered rather than the long-dead that interested her. Inspired by the book, ‘Witnesses From The Grave: The Stories Bones Tell’, the story of the creation of the Argentene Forensic Anthropology Team to unearth and identify the remains of Argentinians who had disappeared during the military junta of the '70s and '80s, Clea took up forensic anthropology. Her goal was simple and at the same time profound--to help end human rights abuses by proving to would-be killers that bones can talk.
Still a graduate student when she joined the Rwanda mission, she was the youngest member of the team to arrive in Kibuye in 1996. Her second mission was in Kigali (a different part of Rwanda) later that same year. After the two missions in Africa, she participated in five more missions for the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Due in part to her efforts and those of her colleagues, many high-ranking government officials (the governor of Kibuye, the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the President of Serbia) and military personnel (majors, captains, colonels and commanders of the Yugoslav People’s Army as well as major generals, commanders and deputy commanders of the Bosnian Serb Army) were indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The best known of these would be the recently-deceased Slobodan Milosevic.
In her capacity as forensic anthropologist, Clea’s job was to help identify hundreds of bodies from mass graves, proving that they were non-combatants, showing how they had died, and finally returning the remains to grieving relatives.
Not only was she examining bones and dental remains in an attempt to give an accurate age range to the deceased, thereby leading to a positive identification, she had to participate fully in the exhumation. This is a delicate task once the bodies have been exposed (often lying helter skelter on top of each other, with a mass grave holding several layers of bodies at various stages of decomposition), it is also extremely hard physical labour just getting the grave opened up fully. The conditions were always atrocious, the tools available often inadequate, and then there were other people’s egos to contend with.
Through it all, Clea maintained a clear sense of purpose and professionalism, even though she had to deal with deplorable conditions, uncooperative team-mates, rampant bureaucracy and her superior’s unfortunate idiosyncrasies. The only time she felt unequal to doing her job was when she visualized the death of one victim she was working on. Considering she was often dealing with the dead bodies of women and children who had met with very violent ends, it would be unthinkable if she had remained unaffected emotionally.
From her work, she gained some insights into why such outrageous and tragic events happen. Her belief is that people act in self-interest—it’s as simple as that. There is no racial or ‘tribal’ difference between a Hutu or a Tutsi. They have the same culture and religion. The differentiation was created by the colonizing Belgians who used the baseless classification of height and nose size/shape to ‘divide and conquer’. And when you raise one group of people over another for years, resentment festers, and when there is not enough for everyone, promising one group the other’s land is often enough to turn neighbours and friends against each other.
Similarly, she wondered if people were killed and expelled to avenge a war in 1389, as Milosevic claimed, or was it because there are mineral-rich parts of Kosovo that would reap him and others like him money and power? It seemed that religion and culture differences were used to inflame citizens and at the same time cover up the real, self-serving, intentions of those hungry for power and more than willing to sacrifice the smaller, insignificant, people they were sworn to protect.
One would think that, after having seen at close hand the unbearable sight of children’s and even babies’ skeletons with skulls smashed, and the remains of young boys shot in the back of the head while their hands were tied behind their backs, anyone would be sickened and disillusioned by mankind. However, Clea Koff has this story to tell at the end of her book.
In 1997, gunmen burst into a school and told the students to stand up and divide themselves into groups of Hutu and Tutsi. The children refused, saying, ‘There is no Hutu or Tutsi: we are all Rwandan here.’ These were postgenocide kids who were being bombarded by new propaganda about what ‘really’ happened in 1994. Yet they have managed somehow to overcome this propaganda, the age-old prejudice, the issue of vengeance and even fear itself, to stand together and defy the gunmen.
As Clea Koff says, ‘…buried in those children’s stance is more hope that their parents’ generation displayed.’ Buried implicitly, too, is the knowledge of the truth, of what truly happened, and the fact that the children knew it to be fundamentally wrong. The truth empowered them to be unafraid, and part of that truth comes from the dead telling their stories through their bones, their voices unlocked by the science of forensic anthropology.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
jc_hall
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Member: JC Hall
Location: Toronto, Canada
Reviews written: 199
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Going back to Vancouver for Christmas! Happy Holidays, everyone!!
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