Scientist speaks up for those silenced
SASKATOON — A scientist who travels the world investigating mass murders and other atrocities is speaking tonight in Saskatoon.
Luis Fondebrider, who teaches in the department of legal medicine at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina, speaks tonight at the Neatby Timlin Theatre on the University of Saskatchewan campus. In the talk — Bones, Ghosts, and Human Rights — Fondebrider is expected to explain how science can advance the cause of justice for the oppressed.
When people are kidnapped and killed, as thousands around the world are each year, their families may never discover what happened. The family is trapped in a painful, frustrating state, he said.
Finding answers for those families “can close the cycle,” Fondebrider said in an interview Sunday after arriving in Saskatoon.
“Families want to know what happened to their loved one,” he said.
Fondebrider was a university student in the early 1980s when Argentina’s dictatorship fell. He and others, using their scientific backgrounds, decided to begin investigating the estimated 40,000 disappearances in that country. He wanted to help the families, but he said it was also a matter of achieving justice for the societies scarred by such ideological violence.
Soon, he began collaborating with others in this emerging field, travelling to other Latin American countries. He and his team have since expanded to more than 60 countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. He’s provided expert testimony and advice to tribunals and other bodies around the world.
“It’s a job, but at the same time it’s a passion to help those families,” he said.