Zimbabwe exhumations must be done by forensic specialists

As the Bulawayo High Court this week ordered a halt to the exhumation of bodies from a mass grave by Zanu-PF, Amnesty International stepped into the fray and called for forensic experts to be involved.
The human rights body warned that hundreds of bodies found recently in a mass grave in the Mount Darwin area of northern Zimbabwe might never be identified unless professional forensic experts carry out the exhumations.
Bodies have been shown on Zimbabwean television being bundled into plastic bags and old sacks to await reburial, raising fears that evidence could be lost.
This week Justice Nicholas Mathonsi granted an interdict sought by the Zimbabwe People's Liberation Army that exhumations at Mt Darwin, and any other part of the country, should be done as part of a government-led "legal process".
The Fallen Heroes Trust, a previously obscure group aligned to President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and its former military wing, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, says it has dug up 640 bodies and that thousands more may still lie in the Monkey William Mine. It claims the remains are of combatants killed in the 1970s bush war for independence from white minority rule.
But the interdict granted by Mathonsi compels the trust to stop the exhumations, leading to a government process which will seek to identify the remains where possible and facilitate reburial.
But Michelle Kagari, Amnesty International's deputy director for Africa, said: "It (the grave) is a crime scene and exhumations require professional forensic expertise to enable adequate identification, determination of cause of death and criminal investigations. This disturbing footage (on TV) raises questions that the Zimbabwean authorities must answer.
"Exhumations require professional forensic expertise to enable adequate identification, determination of cause of death and criminal investigations.
"Families of the victims expect the bodies to be identified and to be given decent burials in line with traditional and religious practice. As such, these bodies cannot simply be consigned to history without proper forensic tests to determine who the dead people are and how and why they died," Kagari said.
Early last month , the state-run Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation Television (ZBC-TV) reported the exhumation of hundreds of bodies from a site in Monkey William Mine/Chibondo Mine in Mt Darwin district. It claimed the bodies were those of people killed by then prime minister Ian Smith's Rhodesian forces in the 1970s during the country's war of independence.
The co-Minister of Home Affairs, Kembo Mohadi, told ZBC-TV later that the government was to take over the exhumations from the Fallen Heroes Trust.
However, given the scale of human remains found so far and the failings of the government to immediately secure the site, Amnesty is concerned that international best practice on exhumations is not being adhered to.
"The Zimbabwe government must ensure that exhumations are professionally conducted according to international standards and, where possible after identification, to return the remains to family members," Kagari said.
"If the Zimbabwe government does not have the capacity to undertake these exhumations properly it must ask for international cooperation and assistance to ensure that forensic experts can undertake the exhumations," she said.
Mishandling of these mass graves has serious implications on potential exhumation of other sites in Zimbabwe.
Thousands of civilians were also killed by Zanu-PF state security forces in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces in the mid-1980s and are allegedly buried in mine shafts and mass graves in these regions.