ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at a series of endeavours to come to terms with Somaliland’s violent past. In dealing with the past in the region, it is possible to conceptually distinguish four phases: silencing the past, containing the past, legal proceedings, and forensic proceedings. It focuses on the motives of various actors involved mainly ordinary Somalis, diaspora actors, international human rights activists and forensic experts and the role played by ‘facts’ pertaining to the current political situation of Somaliland as established by forensic anthropologists. This also points to different normative spaces within which the past is negotiated and forensic anthropology is situated. The chapter argues that the forensic endeavours in Somaliland shed light on the contemporary role of forensic anthropology in general, but in particular on the phenomenon of forensic fetishism.
