Guatemala City, Aug 30 (EFE).- Family members of the 45,000 people who remain unaccounted for more than two decades after the end of Guatemala’s 1960-1996 civil war demanded on Thursday that Congress create a commission to search for their missing loved ones.
During a march to the legislature coinciding with the International Day of the Disappeared, Ana Xuc, an indigenous woman from a remote community in the northern province of Alta Verapaz, told EFE that she continues to search for her father and uncle.
She said that, according to her family, they both went missing in 1982 when she was a toddler.
“We still haven’t found them and we don’t know where they are,” Xuc said.
The march was organized by the Guatemala Forced Disappearance Working Group (GTDF), a coalition of organizations that is urging Congress to approve a bill, Law 3590, drafted 11 years ago.
The initiative proposes the creation of the Commission for the Search of Victims of Forced Disappearance.
Lawmakers “have been ignoring the demands of more than 200,000 families who are looking for 45,000 missing people,” the GTDF said.
Photos of some of those 45,000 people who disappeared during the civil war were placed outside Congress as part of the protest.
The war, which ended Dec. 29, 1996, claimed more than 200,000 lives and the vast majority of the victims were indigenous peasants.