Interview with Eva Elvira Klonowski

 

A Polish-born Icelandic citizen who lives and works in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH). She is a senior forensic anthropologist for the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), which together with State and Federal commission helps families to determine the fate of relatives lost in the 1991-95 war in BiH. She is working on individual and mass graves since the beginning of war victims exhumation in BiH in 1996 run by Hague International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

Eva is chief forensic anthropologist working with a team of local experts and gravediggers of State and Federal Commission for search of missing persons BiH. Their mission is to find and recover Bosnian Muslim victims of the ethnic cleansing of the early 1990s. Some 20.000 are still listed as missing. Eight years after the ending of the war in BiH giving names to exhumed bodies became a central role in rebuilding lives in post-war country. The BiH identification program has no comparison in human history and ICMP is announcing it's application in Iraq.

Federal commission has exhumed with a help of experts around 16.500 bodies in more than 300 mass graves. Two thirds of found bodies passed trough Eva's hands.

In an interview she discusses the victims identification process in BiH. She reminiscences about her and her family refugee life, how she came to Iceland, life in Poland, search for government financial support to work in Bosnia-Herzegovina, first disillusion with employers and exhumation program. She talks about her devotion to work, will to help people, language problems in BiH and her family left on Iceland.


by Sasa Petejan