disappeared is a shack
cambodia

In a makeshift shack, four children await while their families search for them.

written by sok phay

A shack sheltering four indigenous children in Ochum district, Ratanakiri province, reminds me of the risks of trafficking in persons, missing children and disappearances when children migrate from remote communities to provincial towns or cities within Cambodia or cross the border to other countries in South East Asia and beyond. In these communities, there is a tradition of child marriage that forces these children to get involved in sexual activities early on. Additionally, children living in remote indigenous communities face challenges in their daily lives and are most vulnerable due to lack of food, malnutrition, lack of access to education, family care and protection systems.

Children find shelter in a shack in Ratanakiri, in north-east Cambodia. 

Sok Phay Sean is an activist and executive director of a helpline that assists over 4 500 children across Cambodia. He advocates for issues ranging from domestic violence to child trafficking.

disappeared is a tomb
philippines

Thousands of people have been murdered or abducted. Most of them have not yet been identified.

written by rafael lerma
In May 2016, Rodrigo Duterte, then mayor of Davao City, won a landslide victory in the Philippines’ presidential elections on a campaign centred on the eradication of drugs in the country, a goal that he maintained must be achieved even if authorities resort to violence. ‘Forget the laws on human rights,’ he said at his final campaign rally. ‘If I make it to the presidential palace, I will do just what I did as mayor [of Davao]. You drug pushers, hold-up men and do-nothings, you better go out. Because I'd kill you, I'll dump all of you into Manila Bay, and fatten all the fish there.’ Since then, a wave of killings has engulfed the country. 

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, government data suggests that, since July 2016, 8 663 people have been killed, although other estimates are much higher, even tripling that number. Included here are those killed by unidentified gunmen and vigilantes. 

Some of these victims are found dead and wrapped in plastic, dumped in rivers, dark alleys, empty lots, and found in different provinces from where they were last seen or abducted. Their families often take days, weeks, even months to find out – mostly after rounding up dozens of police stations and funeral parlours. Some only learn about their loved one's brutal death on the news or through social media. Others cannot afford to find a missing relative. 

Many victims are buried in unmarked mass graves, with little help from the government to identify unclaimed bodies. To their families, they will forever be missing. 

Four years into the drug war, the public’s attention is focused on extrajudicial killings and unidentified vigilantes. Disappearances, one of the cruellest forms of human rights violations, are overshadowed. Victims of disappearances are often initially abducted, and at the mercy of their captors. Without proof, their families struggle to seek help from authorities, and are left to suffer with the unknown, and mourn without closure. 

According to the Families of Victims of Involuntary Disappearances, an NGO that has been documenting cases of enforced disappearances since 1983, there have been 43 reported cases of disappearances related to Duterte’s war on drugs, of which 25 have been documented. However, many cases remain unreported. Without proper investigations into killings and disappearances, a culture of violence and impunity persists in the Philippines.

Manila, Philippines. Many victims of the country’s ‘war on drugs’ are buried in unmarked graves.

Rafael Lerma is a freelance photojournalist and documentary photographer based in Manila, Philippines. His work centres on capturing the effects of the war on drugs in the country.
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF
FINDING THE DISAPPEARED
previous chapter

Graciela has covered more than 300 fields in the north-east of Mexico looking for her daughter Mily. In one of those searches she found a ranch, and inside one of the rooms there were women’s and men’s dirty clothing and empty bottles.

On the wall, someone had drawn a Virgin of Guadalupe and the word Mamá (mother). Graciela ran her fingers over the drawing and thought about Mily, about how much she liked drawing and how much she liked drawing that very image, the Virgin. The police accompanying her on the search took photographs to test the handwriting and determine if Mily had drawn those images, if Mily had been held there – in that room with white walls and sheet-metal roof, with a big hole that was meant to be a window, from which you could see a tree with a thick trunk and lush leaves. 

On the wall, someone had drawn a Virgin of Guadalupe and the word Mamá (mother). Graciela ran her fingers over the drawing and thought about Mily, about how much she liked drawing and how much she liked drawing that very image, the Virgin. The police accompanying her on the search took photographs to test the handwriting and determine if Mily had drawn those images, if Mily had been held there – in that room with white walls and sheet-metal roof, with a big hole that was meant to be a window, from which you could see a tree with a thick trunk and lush leaves. 

'disappeared is a shack'
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What happens to the disappeared in that space, which to us is a vacuum, an unknown, until someone like Graciela shows it to us, makes it visible?

GRACIELA,
MILYNALI'S MOTHER

You feel that strange presence, sensing that something happened here, you get goose bumps, and you start looking and find packing tape, ties, bullet casings… and you end up finding a knife, votive candles, remains… When you come across the encampments of people who have been kidnapped, with evidence that they were there … you realize what’s happening… 

You can’t deny that they could have been there, and if on top of that you find hidden graves, charred remains of bones, barrels for burning, places where the earth has been disturbed in strange ways … you can imagine what could have happened to them. … I would rather my daughter not be alive so that she wouldn’t be living through everything I’ve seen. I would rather find her in a clandestine gravesite because I wouldn’t wish this horror on anyone.  

You can’t deny that they could have been there, and if on top of that you find hidden graves, charred remains of bones, barrels for burning, places where the earth has been disturbed in strange ways … you can imagine what could have happened to them. … I would rather my daughter not be alive so that she wouldn’t be living through everything I’ve seen. I would rather find her in a clandestine gravesite because I wouldn’t wish this horror on anyone.  

MIRNA MEDINA,
ROBERTO'S MOTHER

They might have even dug their own graves, most of us think that they dig them themselves. Like in a movie: You get to the spot… the person who took them there walks 10, 15 metres, and stops. (…) They make them dig their own grave and murder them there. I know because the bullet casings are there, so there’s lots of evidence that they could have been murdered in that spot.

You see them handcuffed with tape covering their mouths, with bullet holes in their skull, their eyes covered, or covered with their own shirts, their heads covered. The last body we found 15 days ago … they had put a bag, a bag from a political party, over its head. 

You see them handcuffed with tape covering their mouths, with bullet holes in their skull, their eyes covered, or covered with their own shirts, their heads covered. The last body we found 15 days ago … they had put a bag, a bag from a political party, over its head. 

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF
KEEPING A
RECORD

Mexico is nearly 2 million square kilometres; it is the 13th largest country in the world and the largest in Latin America. Its terrain is uneven, crisscrossed by the Sierra Madre Occidental and the Sierra Madre Oriental. The land is divided into 32 states. 

Between 2006 and 2019, 3 631 clandestine graves were found in Mexico, according to a government registry introduced in early 2020. In 2020, the bodies of 1 124 people were exhumed. Every eight hours, a body is recovered from a clandestine gravesite. The following is a list of sites where bodies have been found. 

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CLICK ON THE MAP TO EXPLORE

AGUASCALIENTES

While searching an abandoned ranch, government agents found a clandestinely buried corpse. Months earlier, another corpse was found at the same site buried a little over a metre deep in the back patio. 

our country is used as a tomb.

Clandestine gravesites have been found in all of its regions. This snapshot of news reports, undertaken with the urgent need to denounce, to recount what has happened, is an attempt to give a material account of this horror.

'disappeared is a tomb'
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