Raquel Fortun is one of only two forensic pathologists in the Philippines. Earlier this year, I interviewed her about her mission to discover the truth, and hopefully win justice, for the victims of former president Rodrigo Duterte's "war on drugs".
Her crusade came about through unlikely circumstances. The victims of Duterte's crackdowns were overwhelmingly from the poorest backgrounds, and many families could not afford to extend temporary leases on their graves. As families began to face eviction from cemeteries five years on from the killings, Fortun offered to carry out investigations to collect evidence about their deaths.
Known to many as just Doc, Fortun does the work for free. She has a no-nonsense manner, and spoke frankly about the risks she faces by working on such politically sensitive cases.
She has found serious irregularities in how official postmortems were performed - including at least a dozen death certificates that wrongly cited natural causes, such as pneumonia or sepsis.
The killings, which estimates suggest led to between 12,000 and 30,000 deaths, are the subject of an investigation by the international criminal court. However, its investigators have been banned from the country, making the work of experts such as Fortun even more crucial.
Rebecca Ratcliffe, south-east Asia correspondent The Indian father who rescued his daughter...with a fanfare If only all Indian fathers could be like Prem Gupta, 55, India would be a much happier place for young women.
When he heard that his newly married daughter, Sakshi, was being mistreated by her husband, Gupta took a different path from that trodden by millions of parents: they would have told her to tolerate the abuse to save her family the stigma of divorce, and urged her to adjust. Married women who are being abused or beaten by their husbands hear this exhortation from their parents all the time, leaving them with no escape route.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 22, 2023-Ausgabe von The Guardian Weekly.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 22, 2023-Ausgabe von The Guardian Weekly.
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