World

The bodies of 70 inmates from the Philippines’ largest prison were laid to rest Friday in a mass burial, weeks after their decomposing remains were discovered in a Manila funeral home.

They were among 176 corpses found by police during an investigation into the death of an inmate, who was accused of being involved in the killing of a journalist in early October.

Most of the deaths were due to “natural causes”, said Cecilia Villanueva, the Bureau of Corrections’ acting director for health and welfare services.

Among them was a Japanese national. 

Villanueva said 127 of the 140 bodies buried so far were badly decomposed and could not be autopsied again.

The bodies began piling up in the funeral home in December 2021 after their families — most of them poor — did not claim them.

Villanueva blamed “constraints” for the failure of corrections staff to ensure the inmates were given timely burials.

Bodies are normally held at the accredited funeral home for three months to give relatives time to retrieve them.  

Friday’s mass burial was the biggest ever by the Bureau of Corrections, Villanueva told reporters.

Minimum security inmates carried the 70 plywood coffins to their final resting place — cheap concrete tombs in a cemetery inside the prison complex.

The gruesome discovery at the funeral home was only the latest scandal to rock the troubled Bureau of Corrections, which runs the country’s overcrowded prison system.

Its chief Gerald Bantag is accused of ordering the killing of radio broadcaster Percival Mabasa, as well as Cristito Villamor Palana, an inmate who allegedly passed on the kill order to the gunman.

After Bantag was suspended from his job as director general, a huge pit was discovered next to his former official residence inside the prison complex.

Bantag claims it was for scuba diving, not an escape tunnel for inmates.

Among the remaining bodies still at the funeral home, eight would be re-examined by Raquel Fortun, one of the country’s two forensic pathologists. 

Villanueva said an average of one to two prisoners died every day inside New Bilibid Prison, where about 29,000 inmates are held in a facility designed for

 6,435. 

There were only five doctors to treat the prisoners, but the Bureau of Corrections was trying to hire more.

“We are doing everything we can, we try to provide health care, just as health care is provided to the public, but there are so many constraints,” Villanueva said.

Cities across China further unwound Covid restrictions Friday, loosening testing and quarantine rules in the wake of nationwide protests calling for an end to lockdowns and greater political freedoms.

Anger and frustration with China’s hardline pandemic response spilled out onto the streets last weekend in widespread demonstrations not seen in decades.

In the wake of the unrest across China, a number of cities have begun loosening Covid restrictions, such as moving away from daily mass testing requirements, a tedious mainstay of life under Beijing’s stringent zero-Covid policy.

At the same time, authorities are continuing to seek to contain protests with heavy security on the streets, online censorship in full force, and surveillance of the population heightened.

As of Friday, the southwestern metropolis of Chengdu will no longer require a recent negative test result to enter public places or ride the metro, instead only requiring a green health code confirming they have not travelled to a “high risk” area.

In Beijing, health authorities called on Thursday on hospitals not to deny treatment to people without a negative PCR test taken within 48 hours.

In January, a pregnant woman in the city of Xi’an miscarried after being refused hospital entry for not having a PCR test result.

China has seen a string of deaths after treatment was delayed by Covid restrictions, including the recent death of a four-month-old baby who was stuck in quarantine with her father.

Those cases became a rallying cry during the protests, with a viral post listing the names of those who died because of alleged negligence linked to the pandemic response.

Many other cities with virus outbreaks are allowing restaurants, shopping malls and even schools to reopen, in a clear departure from previous tough lockdown rules.

In northwestern Urumqi, where a fire that killed ten people was the spark for the anti-lockdown protests, authorities announced Friday that supermarkets, hotels, restaurants, and ski resorts would gradually be opened. 

The city of over four million residents endured one of China’s longest lockdowns, with some areas shut in early August.

– Home quarantine –

An analysis by state-run newspaper People’s Daily on Friday quoted a number of health experts supporting local government moves to allow positive cases to quarantine at home.

The shift would be a marked departure from current rules, which require that they be held in government facilities.

The southern factory hub of Dongguan Thursday said that those who meet “specific conditions” should be allowed to quarantine at home. It did not specify what those conditions would be.

The southern tech hub Shenzhen rolled out a similar policy Wednesday.

Central government officials have also signalled that a broader relaxation of zero-Covid policy could be in the works.

Speaking at the National Health Commission Wednesday, Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said the Omicron variant was weakening and vaccination rates were improving, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

A central figure behind Beijing’s pandemic response, Sun said this “new situation” required “new tasks”.

She made no mention of zero-Covid in those remarks or in another meeting on Thursday, suggesting the approach, that has disrupted the economy and daily life, might soon be relaxed.

Issei Sagawa, a Japanese murderer known as the “Kobe Cannibal” who killed and ate a Dutch student but was never jailed, has died aged 73.

Sagawa died of pneumonia on November 24 and was given a funeral attended only by relatives, with no public ceremony planned, his younger brother and a friend said in a statement.

In 1981, Sagawa was studying in Paris when he invited Dutch student Renee Hartevelt to his home.

He shot her in the neck, raped her, and then consumed parts of her body over the course of several days.

Sagawa then attempted to dispose of her remains in the Bois de Boulogne park and was arrested several days later, confessing his crime to police.

But in 1983 he was deemed unfit for trial by French medical experts and was initially held in a psychiatric institution before being deported to Japan in 1984.

Hartevelt’s family pledged at the time to push for Sagawa to be prosecuted in Japan so that “the murderer would never go free”.

But on his arrival, he was ruled sane by Japanese authorities, who decided Sagawa’s only problem was a “character anomaly” and that he did not require hospitalisation.

Japanese authorities were unable to get his case files from their French counterparts, who considered the case closed, leaving the murderer to walk free.

Sagawa made no secret of his crime and capitalised on his notoriety, including with a novel-like memoir titled “In the Fog” in which he reminisced about the murder in vivid detail.

The murder was also the subject of Japanese novelist Juro Kara’s “Letter from Sagawa-kun”, which won the country’s most prestigious literary prize in 1982.

Despite the heinous details of the murder, and his lack of remorse, Sagawa gained a level of celebrity and regularly gave interviews to domestic and international media in the years after his return.

He was featured in a magazine for his paintings of naked women, appeared in a pornographic movie and produced a manga comic book that depicted his crime in graphic and unrelenting detail.

The sordid fascination with the murder even saw it referenced by the Rolling Stones and The Stranglers in songs.

Sagawa lived out his final years with his brother, reportedly in a wheelchair after a series of health problems including a stroke.

But he displayed no apparent sign of remorse or reform, telling Vice in a 2013 interview as he looked at posters of Japanese women: “I think they would taste delicious”.

He also recounted details of the incident and his ongoing obsession with cannibalism in interviews and a 2017 documentary, “Caniba”.

The film’s directors spent months with Sagawa and his brother, and described themselves as “conflicted” about the experience.

“We were disgusted, fascinated, we wanted to understand,” said co-director Verena Paravel.

A new law gives Turkey fresh ammunition to censor the media and silence dissent ahead of elections in which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan plans to prolong his two decades in office, journalists and activists say.

Since 2014, when Erdogan became president, tens of thousands of people, from high-school teens to a former Miss Turkey have been prosecuted under a long-standing law that criminalises insulting the president.

The law, passed in parliament in October, could see reporters and social media users jailed for up to three years for spreading what is branded “fake news”.

“Prosecution, investigation and threats are part of our daily life,” Gokhan Bicici, editor-in-chief of Istanbul-based independent news portal dokuz8NEWS, told AFP at his news portal’s headquarters on the Asian side of the Bosphorus.

“Being more careful, trying as much as possible not to be a target is the main concern of many journalists in Turkey today, including the most free ones.”

Press advocates say the new law could allow authorities to shut down the internet, preventing the public from hearing about exiled Turkish mob boss Sedat Peker’s claims about the government’s alleged dirty affairs. 

Or, they say, the government could restrict access to social media as they did after a November 13 bomb attack in Istanbul which killed six people and which authorities blamed on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Most Turkish newspapers and television channels run by allies toe the government line, but social networks and internet-based media remained largely free — to the dismay of Erdogan.

Next June he faces his trickiest elections yet since becoming prime minister in 2003 and subsequently winning the presidency.

His ruling party’s approval ratings have dropped to historic lows amid astronomical inflation and a currency crisis.

– ‘Enormous control’ –

Digital rights expert Yaman Akdeniz said the law provides “broad and uncircumscribed discretion to authorities” in its potential widespread use ahead of the election.

“It is therefore no surprise that the first person to be investigated for this crime is the leader of the main opposition party,” he told AFP.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a likely candidate for president in next year’s election, came under fire for accusing the government on Twitter over “an epidemic of methamphetamines” in Turkey.

Bicici says the government already had enough ammunition — from anti-terror to defamation laws — to silence the free media.

Erdogan has defended the new law, however, calling it an “urgent need” and likening “smear campaigns” on social networks to a “terrorist attack”.

Paradoxically, Erdogan himself has a social media account and urged his supporters to rally through Twitter after surviving a coup attempt in 2016.

The government maintains that the law fights disinformation and has started publishing a weekly “disinformation bulletin”.

Emma Sinclair-Webb of Human Rights Watch said the government “is equipping itself with powers to exert enormous control over social media.” 

“The law puts the tech companies in a very difficult position: they either have to comply with the law and remove content or even hand over user data or they face enormous penalties,” she said.

– Uneasy future –

Turkish journalists staged protests when the bill was debated in parliament.

“This law… will destroy the remaining bits of free speech,” said Gokhan Durmus, head of the Turkish Journalists’ Union.

Fatma Demirelli, director of the P24 press freedom group, pointed to “new arrests targeting a large number of journalists working for Kurdish media outlets since this summer.”

“We are concerned that this new law… might further exacerbate the situation by pushing up the number of both prosecutions and imprisonments of journalists significantly,” she told AFP. 

In October, nine journalists were remanded in custody accused of alleged ties to the PKK, which Ankara and its Western allies blacklist as a terror group.

Ergin Caglar, a journalist for the Mezopotamya news agency that was raided by police, said despite pressure “the free media has never bowed its head until today, and it will not after the censorship law and the arrests.” 

Dokuz8NEWS reporter Fatos Erdogan said reporting is getting tougher, pointing out police barricades to AFP as she filmed a recent protest against the arrest of the head of the Turkish doctors’ union, Sebnem Korur Fincanci.

“I have a feeling there will be more pressure after the censorship law,” she said.

Erol Onderoglu of Reporters Without Borders who himself stands accused of terror-related charges, said the law “rejects all the qualities of journalism and having a dissident identity.

“I don’t believe the future is going to be that easy.”

All that balding Indian television executive Athar Rasheed wanted was to look handsome and get married. But the 30-year-old’s seemingly harmless hair transplant went fatally wrong. 

Women have been judged on their appearance for millennia, but in an increasingly materialistic Indian society, men are also feeling pressure to look young and presentable for fear of losing their social standing.

More and more prematurely balding men are opting for hair transplants as disposable incomes rise and an emphasis on personal appearance becomes stronger.

But in a weakly regulated sector, the procedure — sometimes performed by amateurs self-trained on YouTube — can have deadly results.

Rasheed was the sole breadwinner for his family and aspired to a better life — owning a house and getting his two sisters married.

But he developed sepsis after undergoing a hair transplant at a clinic in Delhi last year, his distraught mother Asiya Begum, 62, told AFP.

The swelling spread from his head and he suffered terrible agonies.

“My son died a very painful death. His kidneys stopped functioning and then all his other organs collapsed,” she said, breaking down.

Armed with photographs showing Rasheed’s bloated face and black rashes that broke out all over his body in his final hours, the family lodged a police complaint.

Four people, including the two men who performed the surgery, have been arrested and are awaiting trial.  

“I remember my son every day and die a slow death,” she said, sitting in her modest one-room rented flat in a rundown neighbourhood of the capital.

“I lost my son but I don’t want any other mother to lose their child because of fraudulent practices of a few people,” she said.

– Confidence booster –

When performed by a skilled surgeon, a hair transplant can be a life-changing and confidence-boosting experience, especially for young Indian men looking for personal and professional growth.

Harish Iyer, a social commentator and equal rights activist, said men have started focusing more on their grooming as lifestyles change.

“The need to exhibit youth and vitality is echoed by all genders,” Iyer told AFP.

“The pressure was always on women to look a certain way and find acceptance, but the needle is now changing.” 

But at the same time, specialists say increasingly sedentary lifestyles, smoking, improper diet and stress can result in early hair loss. 

A hair transplantation procedure involves removing follicles from a dense area of hair, such as the back of the head, and then implanting them on the affected area of the scalp.

Doctor Mayank Singh performs up to 15 surgeries a month at his upscale clinic in a posh New Delhi neighbourhood.

Most of his patients are aged 25 to 35 and looking to either get married or climb the professional ladder, especially in jobs where appearances matter.

The procedure costs some 350,000 rupees ($4,300), a considerable sum in a country where millions live on less than two dollars a day.

Seedy clinics manned by untrained personnel perform the surgery at a fraction of the cost.

– YouTube workshops –

Singh, who is also the secretary of the Association of Hair Restoration Surgeons of India, said quacks were bringing the industry a bad name.

“People have this myth that this is a minor procedure, whereas the duration of the surgery is pretty long, running into some six to eight hours,” said Singh.

“It involves a lot of local anaesthesia that has to be administered over time. If someone does not have the knowledge about what we need to do, then it can become an unsafe procedure.”

Alarmed by the mushrooming number of clinics offering often subpar service at discounted prices, India’s National Medical Commission issued a warning in September.

“Watching in workshops or on YouTube or similar platforms is not adequate training to start aesthetic procedures including hair transplantation,” it said.

Only properly trained doctors should perform such procedures, it added.

Singh, a plastic surgeon, said it was imperative that the guidelines were strictly adhered to.

He has a long list of happy customers, including doctor Lakshmi Narayanan, who for years avoided going to social gatherings because of his baldness.

“My hair loss started when I was just 18. I used to avoid taking pictures of myself or even looking in the mirror,” Narayanan, now 29, told AFP.

“But not anymore. I can interact confidently with people now and I am looking for a life partner.”