The Grim Forensic Work in Srebrenica

DIGGING up mass graves, identifying the victims and providing evidence for the courts has become a grim new science for the end of the 20th century. In Srebrenica, where an estimated 3,000 unarmed civilians were massacred by Bosnian Serbs last summer, a team of experts from Physicians for Human Rights has been piecing together a picture of who did what to whom and how.

In the last decade, the Boston-based voluntary organization has acquired unique expertise in uncovering facts that many would prefer to remain buried with the victims.

The organization brings together a wide range of specialists: anthropologists specializing in human identification, pathologists, archaeologists, radiographers and molecular biologists.

The work began with the excavation of mass graves in Argentina in 1985 at the invitation of the new democratic government of President Raúl Alfonsin. Following similar work in El Salvador, Guatemala, Iraqi Kurdistan, Croatia and Rwanda, the organization was asked by the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague to provide evidence in the Srebrenica massacre.

Most of the specialists who are taking part in the Srebenica operation have donated their time. What keeps them going at a task that is frankly disagreeable, arduous and unrecognized by the public is the sense that they are contributing both to historical accuracy and human healing, said Dr. Robert H. Kirschner, director of the organization's international forensic program.

"Providing evidence for the war crimes tribunals, and preserving the historical record so that people will not be able to come along and say these things never happened, are very important," Dr. Kirschner said.