#mass grave

[sugas6thtooth]

There's a mass Palestinian grave at a popular Israeli beach, veterans confess

***

[wordswithoutaworld]

I still can’t let go of this situation, so even if it seems stupid to someone — fuck it.

I keep thinking about how one western blogger, who describes himself on insta as a mass graves specialist and the director of his own project focused on analyzing mass graves, after visiting Izium (a ukrainian city), where more than 447 residents of this small city were tortured and killed — posts about how Russia’s war against Ukraine has already been going on longer than Russia’s war against Germany (even though that was the USSR, not just Russia, but whatever at this point), and then likes a joke posted in his comments, which is basically like, haha, I definitely would have done a better job taking over the ukrainian people lol

This is just dark humor, right?

A western blogger comes, looks at our graves, and laughs that someone could have done it better.

I like how his page bio includes the phrase “Are you going to weep for the people again?”, because yeah — that’s exactly what I see him doing.

And then, after some time, he posts another reel that is exactly the same about the number of days of the war — this time shooting at targets in the background and adding a song in russian.

I can see that this guy hasn’t only been in Ukraine, but also in Syria — another place where Russia has left its mark.

What troubles me is that a person who works with such painful subjects finds jokes like this funny. But maybe that’s just me — one of those people who could easily have ended up in those graves.

Ha-ha

[sembulapeyalneerpol]

The discoveries emerging from the Chemmani mass grave over the past week have been harrowing. A blue UNICEF-issued schoolbag. A child’s toy. A sandal. And the bodies of men, women, and children, painfully unearthed one by one. Each one is a testimony to Sri Lanka’s brutal past and the enduring failure to bring those responsible to justice. The existence of these grisly mass graves is no secret. Countless Tamils were murdered by the Sri Lankan state and buried in such sites. From Mirusuvil to Mullivaikkal, the Tamil homeland is marked by mass graves and militarised occupation. Chemmani, in particular, has been internationally recognised as a crime scene since 1998. Now, decades later, as yet another Sri Lankan regime attempts to present itself as a departure from its predecessors, the site is once again being excavated. Yet the state’s response has been predictably muted. While the current administration launches high-profile crackdowns on alleged corruption and detains political opponents, it has done nothing to address matters of urgent importance to the Tamil people. There has been no acknowledgement of the concerns of families of the disappeared. The same state institutions that facilitated impunity are now tasked with supervising exhumations. The same military that stands accused of mass killings continues to occupy the North-East. And the party in power has adopted the same refusal to deliver meaningful international accountability as those before it.

[blueiscoool]

Mass Grave of Roman Soldiers Discovered in Austria

The renovation of a football pitch in Austria’s capital has led to the discovery of a Roman mass grave housing the remains of more than a hundred soldiers who died in combat.

The construction company working on the sports field in the district of Simmering in Vienna found a large number of human remains at the site in late October, according to the Vienna Department of Urban Archaeology, part of the Wien Museum.

The remains of at least 129 individuals were uncovered during excavations by archaeologists and anthropologists from the museum and archaeological excavation company Novetus, the museum said in a press release Wednesday.

However, the total number of individuals is estimated to be more than 150, as the earlier construction works had displaced a large number of dislocated bones in the 16-foot-long pit.

The skeletal finds suggest “a hasty covering of the dead with earth,” as the individuals were not buried in an orderly fashion, but with their limbs intertwined with each other’s and with many lying on their stomachs or sides, the museum said.

‘Catastrophic’ military operation

After the skeletons were cleaned up and examined, researchers found that they were all male, and most were more than 1.7 meters tall (more than 5 feet 7 inches) and between the ages of 20 and 30 when they died.

Their dental health was generally good, with few signs of infection, but every individual analyzed bore injuries sustained at or near their time of death.

The variety of wounds, which were mainly found in the skull, pelvis and torso, and made by weapons including spears, daggers, swords and iron bolts, suggests they were sustained during battle rather than the result of execution – the punishment for military cowardice, the museum said.

“As the remains are purely male, it can be ruled out that the site of discovery was not connected with a military hospital or similar or that an epidemic was the cause of death. The injuries to the bones are clearly the result of combat,” it added.

The bones were dated to approximately 80 to 230 AD.

The men were probably robbed of their weapons, since only a small number of objects were found alongside them, according to the release.

Archaeologists uncovered two iron spearheads, one of which was found lodged in a hip bone.

Numerous hobnails were discovered near the feet of one individual. These nails would have studded the underside of leather Roman military shoes, the museum said.

An X-ray of the scabbard of a rusted and corroded iron dagger revealed typical Roman decorations of inlays of silver wire. This was dated to between the mid-1st century and early 2nd century AD.

There were also several pieces of scale armor, which became customary around 100 AD, the museum said. However, they were unusual in having more square-shaped features than round, it added.

A cheek piece from a Roman helmet was found to be from a type that became customary from the middle of the 1st century.

“We are blown away by this find. It is a genuine game-changer,” Kristina Adler-Wölfl, head of the Vienna Department of Urban Archaeology, said Friday, adding that this is “a once-in-a-lifetime discovery” for the museum’s archaeologists.

“There is archaeological evidence of Roman battlefields in Europe, but none from the 1st/2nd century CE with fully preserved skeletons,” she said.

Around 100 AD, ritualized cremation burials were common in the Roman-governed parts of Europe, with whole-body burials “an absolute exception,” according to the museum. “Finds of Roman skeletons from this period are therefore extremely rare,” it said.

“The undignified nature of the burial site along with the deadly wounds found on each individual suggests a catastrophic military confrontation, possibly followed by a hasty retreat,” Adler-Wölfl added.

Battle at the dawn of urban Vienna

Historical records show that in the late 1st century, during the reign of the emperor Domitian, costly battles took place on the Roman Empire’s northern Danube border between the Romans and Germanic tribes.

“This is the first time we have material evidence of the Germanic wars” fought by Domitian between 86 and 96 AD, Adler-Wölfl said. “Before the find, we knew about these conflicts only through some written sources.”

“Our preliminary investigation suggests with near certainty that the mass grave is the result of such a Roman-Germanic battle, one that likely took place in or around 92 CE,” she added.

The destruction of an entire legion is included in reports of disastrous defeats, which later led to the extension of the fortification line known as the Danube Limes under the emperor Trajan, according to the museum.

The Roman expansion of the town of Vindobona, which later became Vienna, “from a small military site to a full-scale legionary fortress occurred in that context,” said Adler-Wölfl.

“This would place the mass grave in immediate conjunction with the beginning of urban life in present-day Vienna,” she added.

The initial investigation by the team in Vienna will form part of a larger international research project, the museum said. This will include DNA analysis, to shed light on the lives of the soldiers and their living conditions.

[gwydionmisha]

Missing gay couple from Chicago found dead in mass grave outside of Mexico City

Over 130,000 people are currently deemed missing or have disappeared in Mexico.

[paintingsandhistory]

Wounded Soldiers in a Cart

Artist: Théodore Géricault (French, 1791–1824)

Date: c. 1814–1818

Medium: Oil painting

Collection: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England

They were not living troops as seen in war, But merely phantoms of a dream, afar In darkness wandering, amid the vapour dim, - A mystery; of shadows a procession grim, Nearing a blackening sky, unto its rim. Victor Hugo, 'The Retreat from Moscow', 1852

In 2001 construction workers in Lithuania uncovered a mass grave containing the bones of 2,000 young men. Remnants of clothing identified them as casualties of one of history's greatest military catastrophes, the retreat of Napoleon Bonaparte's Grand Army from Moscow in the winter of 1812.

In June of that year, Bonaparte had crossed the River Niemen onto Russian soil with a pan-European army of around half a million men. It is estimated that only 10,000 of these survived the extreme cold, the hunger and the murderous attacks of Cossacks on their journey home. Here Théodore Géricault, who himself served as a cavalryman in Napoleon's army after the Russian campaign, registers the shock felt in France by her army's unprecedented failure.

What a contrast these wretched travellers make with the Officer of the Hussars on Horseback, the work that first bought Géricault to public attention in 1812. This dramatic canvas, left, is now in the Louvre, Paris.

As with the bodies found in Lithuania, it is only a few details of costume that allow us to recognize these pale, weary figures as members of the hapless Napoleonic army. The once proud blue of the uniforms is faded to a dusty grey. The soldier in the foreground, his back turned to the viewer, wears the tall bearskin hat of the elite Imperial Guard, but the red rosette on the fur, once the sign of his elevated status, now resembles a raw wound. The man on the left in helmet and boots is a cavalryman, his horse, one presumes, long dead.

Like the troops in Victor Hugo's account of the disaster quoted above, these men are shadows of the warriors who marched so confidently into Russia. It is impossible to tell how many casualties are being transported on this cart: towards the back of the picture the passengers become an indistinct, blurred mass, in which a single, haunted face is just visible.

Indeed the only facial features that can be seen with any clarity are those of the man being lifted by his colleagues. His face and neck are the most brightly lit part of this largely dark composition. His skin is sickly and pale, tinged with green. His mouth hangs slightly open and his eye is sunken.

It could be that this is a wounded soldier being helped onto the wagon by his colleagues. But given his lifeless expression and the arm that hangs limp in the centre of the canvas, it is more likely that he is dead already, a corpse being taken down from the wagon to make room for the living, one of the thousands who were left unburied at the side of the road during the long retreat.

[cavalierzee]

Digging Up Mass Graves

Gaza Civil Defense recovers 100 bodies and transports them to cemeteries.

They are still digging up mass graves of Palestinians killed by the Israeli Occupation, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future..

Then you have the Egyptian government not assisting the Gazans during the Geno

[rebelyells]

Merry Christmas to all those souls alive and in Heaven.