Last week we
read about how DNA tests are not the perfect ways to identify one’s ancestors.
This week, the chapters of To Know Where
He Lies discuss how DNA tests helped the relatives of the victims in the
Srebrenica massacre identify those victims. During the Bosnian War, the
execution of the Bosnians and the “innovative” treatment of their dead bodies
were extremely disastrous and dehumanizing. The postwar efforts of identifying
the missing individuals served to rebuild the community by making these individuals socially significant rather than
ignored. DNA technology not only provided strong evidence for or against
identifications but also accelerated the identification process by the computerized
process of genetic profile matching.
The author noted
that DNA tests were considered to be presenting facts and evidence for the
challenging identification process and transcending politics, hyperbole and
myths. She gave an example of the apolitical and unbiased quality of the tests,
where the individual identities of the victims were removed and the victims
were represented by barcodes instead so that political factors could be
eliminated from the tests. Meanwhile, it is clear
that the DNA tests had
political implications. The adoption
of the DNA tests depended on the participation of different
political forces, including the Bosnian state, international organizations as well as local experts. The
test results also played political roles. The author cited the
actor network theory of Latour, and also mentioned the idea of an
object-oriented democracy, in which the presentation of facts and evidence,
which relies on science and technology, plays a crucial role in influencing the
public. In the case of identifying the missing individuals in the Srebrenica
massacre, the DNA tests were of interests to not only humanitarians but also
Bosniak nationalists, since the tests could serve as further evidence
of the war crime.
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