Relatives of those who disappeared under the Pinochet regime demand information about their loved ones in Santiago, Chile, in 2000.
Frans Lemmens/Alamy
State-sponsored disappearance plays into the most primal of human fears – to vanish without a trace. The modern era started with Chile’s US-backed coup on September 11 1973
A forensic anthropologist analyses exhumed bones removed from a mass grave in one of Guatemala City’s largest cemeteries, La Verbena, in 2011.
Rodrigo Abd/AP
Forensic anthropologist Alexa Hagerty’s work faced her with the brutality of the genocides in Guatemala and in Argentina’s “Dirty War” – and with the bureaucratic violence of state institutions.
During the Russian occupation of Luhansk Oblast, 15 kids were allegedly taken from this rehabilitation center and moved to Russia.
Wojciech Grzedzinski/The Washington Post via Getty Images
These wartime abductions aren’t specific to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Throughout history, they’ve inflicted trauma on society’s most vulnerable – making them a rich subject matter for the stage.
In post-dictatorship Argentina, citizens, like the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, have been the guardians of justice.
Argentine Ministry of Culture/flickr