Colombia unearths landfill looking for scores of disappeared
Colombia unearths landfill looking for scores of disappeared
A project is set to remove 31,000 cubic yards of rubble from La Escombrera, a landfill that might contain the remains of 300 people.
Posted: Saturday, August 8, 2015 12:00 am
Associated Press |
MEDELLIN, Colombia -- The last contact Margarita Restrepo had with her daughter was a hurried phone call on Oct. 25, 2002. The school day was over and 17-year-old Carol Vanesa was going to meet friends at a metro stop near the sprawling Comuna 13 hillside slum.
Restrepo and her children had fled the violent Medellin neighborhood a few days earlier, right before it was taken over by thousands of Colombian soldiers trying to ferret out leftist rebels. She begged the girl not to risk returning there, but the teen went anyway. Neither she nor her two friends have been seen again and, to this day, nobody knows who is responsible for their disappearance.
Thirteen years later, Restrepo and dozens of others who have missing loved ones are closer than ever to closure thanks to a project to remove 31,000 cubic yards of rubble from La Escombrera, a debris landfill on Medellin's outskirts where the remains of as many as 300 people are believed to have been dumped during one of the darkest chapters of Colombia's long-running civil conflict.
At a ceremony July 27 to remember the missing and kick off the search effort, officials joined more than 100 women who dressed in white and carried black, plastic silhouettes to represent their loved ones. After years of silence on the part of the government and much of society, supporters of the families welcomed the start of the work.
More:
http://www.thonline.com/news/national_world/article_5ad89165-11d3-5253-92c9-c2d7c92dc8c3.html
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141170334