The Zipra Veterans Trust has urged government to assemble a technical team to preserve over 600 remains of suspected former liberation war fighters which were left exposed at Chibondo Mine in Mount Darwin after the High Court stopped the exhumations.
Zanu PF-aligned Fallen Heroes Trust was carrying out the exhumations.
After the court order delivered by Bulawayo High Court judge Justice Nicholas Mathonsi last month, the exercise was immediately stopped, leaving the remains lying scattered at the site under makeshift tents.
Zipra veterans, who recently visited the site in Mashonaland Central Province, yesterday revealed most of the bodies were dumped under conditions which could pose a health hazard.
“The orders to stop the exhumations halted all processes and there are many bodies that had been exhumed and are now sheltered under some tentage,” reads the statement.
“The storage conditions for the bodies exhumed are of serious concern and the weather conditions in the area are seriously taking their toll on the mummified bodies and a health hazard could be looming.”
The Zipra veterans said there were many mummified bodies and heaps of bones and skeletons lying scattered at the site.
According to the trust, preparations for reburial of the exhumed bodies were understood to have been taken over by the Department of National Museums and Monuments, but the process had also been halted.
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The trust has called upon the relevant authorities to attend to the situation.
“We recommend that government, through the Ministry of Home Affairs, assemble a technical team to deal with the preservation of the exhumed bodies so as to salvage the situation at the site,” said the Zipra veterans.
“Relevant authorities that handle such cases should make sure that in future they establish beyond any reasonable doubt who it is that is buried in shallow graves, before parading skeletons.”
The Zipra veterans said it was important for government to engage ex-fighters in identifying mass graves and other graves left as legacies of the pre- and post-independence wars.
“Whosoever started this project did not do good homework. They would have laid out appropriate plans to deal with matters accordingly.
“All they wanted was to trigger people’s emotions of the spectre of the liberation war, it was a myopic idea of politicking,” read the statement.
