Police forced me to quit: Pornthip

[Guest]

>>>In the past four years, she has become Thaksin?s favourite senior official. <<<

 

 

that's a bit of a strange statement, given that she was the maybe most outspoken official against the drugwar.

[elef]

As Fly reported from TV yesterday:

 

Anger over corpse transfers

 

Protesting villagers fear bodies mix-up

 

PIYAPORN WONGRAUNG

 

Phangnga _ More than 200 irate tsunami-affected villagers at Ban Nam Khem rallied yesterday and demanded the government suspend the transfer of bodies to a one-stop victim identification centre being set up in Phuket.

 

They asked why they should have to travel to Phuket to claim the bodies of their loved ones and bring them back home at great expense when they were killed in Phangnga.

 

The protesters gathered at Wat Bang Muang _ the province's second largest corpse storage site with more than 1,300 bodies kept in about 30 refrigerated containers.

 

They were concerned that the transfer of the bodies would further complicate the identification process. Forensic experts had completed tissue collections from all the corpses kept at the temple, they said.

 

Protesters said the bodies had decomposed to the extent they could hardly be distinguished from one another and the transfer would lead to a mix-up of corpses, which were roughly sorted according to nationality. A mix-up would further complicate matters, they said.

 

They submitted their demands to Phangnga governor Anuwat Maytheewibulwut and health deputy permanent secretary Dr Supachai Kunaratanapruk, chief of the newly established forensic unit for tsunami victims.

 

``Even if I produced a photo of my niece in a T-shirt that I bought for her which matched a body in a similar T-shirt, I still could not claim the body and I have to wait for the DNA test results,'' said Veera Boonruang, a fisherman who also lost his father in the Dec 26 tragedy.

 

The transfer of corpses from Phangnga to Phuket was agreed at a Saturday meeting between the justice and interior ministers and other senior officials. They had attempted to end a conflict between forensic expert Porntip Rojanasunan and Pol Gen Nopadol Somboonsab, who wanted to create a one-stop centre in Phuket.

 

Under the resolution, the police would take care of the Phuket centre, where information was collected from victims' relatives, while Khunying Porntip would collect data from the 2,300 bodies at Wat Yanyao. When data collection was completed, all the corpses would be transferred to Phuket and the data would be stored in the identification database.

 

The protesters said they wanted to participate in any decisions that related to the corpses. Moreover, they wanted the government to guarantee that Khunying Porntip would continue working until the identification process was finished.

 

Dr Supachai said he would forward the villagers' demands to the interior minister. However, the one-stop identification centre in Phuket was necessary for it was better equipped.

 

``Computer equipment has already been installed there. There are also forensic experts stationed there to re-collect tissue samples for DNA tests if the available data is incomplete,'' said Dr Supachai.

 

Governor Anuwat said he had yet to receive an order to move the corpses to Phuket. More importantly, he pledged not to remove any bodies until there was a settlement with the villagers.

 

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Phuket was a suitable place for the one-stop centre. With an airport and convenient road access there should be no problems for relatives collecting bodies once identification was complete.

 

Khunying Porntip said she would try to concentrate on Thai corpses at Wat Yanyao before handing over the work to the Phuket centre.

 

Of about 2,300 corpses kept at the temple, about 800 were foreigners. Of this, half was handled by foreign forensic experts.

 

She agreed with the villagers that the transfer of bodies to Phuket could complicate the identification process.

 

``Most of the bodies at Wat Bang Muang were Thais. The villagers would have difficulty travelling to Phuket to claim the bodies. Not to mention that they would have to wait for at least a month until the translation of documents from Thai to English to complete,'' she said.

 

She would continue for two more weeks before handing the work over to Phuket.

 

 

Bangkok Post

[elef]

STREET WISE: Laughter amid all the tears

Published on January 17, 2005

 

Despite the continuing war of words with the police, Khunying Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand has managed to retain her sense of humour, even finding time to joke at a meeting with reporters on Thursday.

 

The public has thrown its support behind the forensics expert for her achievements over the three weeks since the tsunami, even if all the dead bodies now have to be dug up for re-identification.

 

And she deserves such support, given her dedication to a task which has led to her losing three kilos in the process. Like others involved in the forensics work, her sleeping accommodation has been a van. Even her husband wasn?t offered a private unit when he arrived on Thursday.

 

What?s more, despite the disappointment that much of her work will have been in vain, she is still concerned about the well-being of her staff.

 

While meeting representatives from the Charoen Pokphand Group, she bluntly asked for a deep-frying pan, to make food more enticing to her staff, who have had to deal with corpses day in, day out.

 

?I won?t ask for a microwave as we already have one. Still, it would be better if we had more raw food to cook. From S&P, perhaps?? she joked.

 

So despite the turf war with the police and being involved virtually non-stop in the distressing task of identifying corpses, it?s nice to see that Pornthip?s humour is still able to shine through.

 

achara_d@nationgroup.com

[sayjann]

i knew nothing about this Woman before Dec 26th.

but since then i have read about her work and her run-ins with the Police over the Years.

she might have been in danger in the past,i do not know......but.

 

with all the publicity in the last few Weeeks do People think there is now a less likelihood of her body being found floating in a Klong one Day?.

[elef]

Pongthep insists Porntip 'won't quit'

 

YUWADEE TUNYASIRI

 

Forensic expert Khunying Porntip Rojanasunan will not quit her job once she completes her work in Phangnga province, despite earlier reports to the contrary, Justice Minister Pongthep Thepkanchana said yesterday.

 

Khunying Porntip, deputy director of the ministry's Central Institute of Forensic Science, ''is determined to continue her work, especially the setting up of systems for identifying missing persons''. Such systems would cover missing persons from all kinds of disasters, he said.

 

Khunying Porntip had recently been locked in a dispute with the police over responsibility for identifying unidentified bodies from the Dec 26 tsunami disaster.

 

The forensic expert turned Wat Yanyao and Wat Bang Muang in Phangnga into make-shift morgues and maintained that the work should be carried out there, while the police have been calling for bodies to be transferred to the new Disaster Victims Identification centre in Phuket.

 

Mr Pongthep said Khunying Porntip appreciated Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's assurance that the Justice Ministry would oversee the missing persons identification centre.

 

Mr Pongthep denied the Justice Ministry and the Royal Thai Police Office have been at loggerheads. He said Khunying Porntip wanted to complete the collection of data on the bodies being stored at the temples first as many agencies have been helping with the task there, and many people were in Phangnga waiting to take the bodies of their dead relatives home.

 

Identifying the bodies of the victims would require the cooperation of 10 Thai and foreign agencies, not just the Justice Ministry and the police, he said.

 

In response to the police claim that the Central Institute of Forensic Science had no legal power to conduct autopsies, Mr Pongthep said, ''The law states that corpses must be left where they are found so that doctors and investigators can examine them. However, we could not leave over 5,000 bodies where they lay''.

 

Bodies were moved so they could be examined in a secure location, he said.

 

 

Bangkok Post

[elef]

MAKESHIFT MORGUES: Unidentified bodies won?t be moved

Published on January 23, 2005

 

Phang Nga governor tells protesters local corpses will stay in temples

 

Phang Nga - The government confirmed yesterday that it would not transfer unidentified corpses from two identification centres for disaster victims in Phang Nga after facing another protest outside Yan Yao Temple in the morning.

 

More than 1,000 residents from five districts in Phang Nga gathered outside the temple and called on authorities to leave the bodies at Bang Muang and Yan Yao temples. Demonstrators also called on officials to construct a memorial to the victims.

 

The protesters blocked the street while waiting for a government representative to arrive for negotiations.

 

Phang Nga Governor Anuwat Metheewiboonkit arrived at the scene and announced that unidentified corpses would not be transferred from these two temples, except the bodies of foreigners that had already been examined by forensic pathologist Khunying Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand.

 

?A memorial is planned near Baan Bang Neang, where Royal Thai Navy ships were destroyed by the tsunami,? he added. ?The government is in negotiations with the owner to buy the land.?

 

The memorial, he added, would contain all the victims? names.

 

Pornthip said that all the corpses of Thais at Yan Yao Temple would remain in place until DNA-matching processes were finished, whereupon all bodies would be returned to relatives. She added that once analyses on foreign corpses were completed, the bodies would be moved to Phuket, where international experts would conduct examinations.

 

Before the protesters agreed to disperse, they asked that Interior Minister Bhokin Bhalakula announce the policy decision himself. They also requested representatives from villages to be allowed to join the official team as supervisors.

 

In response to the protest, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra explained that the leaders of several countries had called him to express their concern over the slow pace of identifying corpses by Thai experts.

 

?Some people [among the protesters] might want to make a political issue out of this,? Thaksin said. ?I ask you, ?Please don?t do that.??

 

The Nation