Jhay
It's easy to not ever know the stories of most of the victims of Duterte’s fake drug war because of the high body count. For every Kian...
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- 3 min
Kim
When you're born into poverty, you realise early on that your life will be a constant struggle to become in a world that constantly...
- 3 min
Raymart
Overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are the subject of many misconceptions both in and outside the Philippines. In the countries where they...
- 3 min
Julie
Kap. Tita. This was how the villagers of Barangay Roosevelt in Tapaz, Capiz referred to Julie Catamin. In this community of Tumandok,...
- 3 min
Edgardo and Ismael
Negros Oriental's land is fertile and captivating, fed by an active volcano and sheltered by forest. But it's also tinged with the blood...
- 3 min
Fabel
This image of Fabel Pineda is the third one I have painted. The first two were based on photos that accompanied most news articles about...
- 1 min
Dodoy
On the morning of 30 December 2020, as Roy Giganto and the rest of the Tumandok 9 lay dead or dying, Lorenzo Paña was 135 miles away in...
- 5 min
Roy
Hinilawod, a 28,000-verse epic that takes around three days to chant, is an ancient literary work that has been passed on orally through...
- 3 min
Aldrinne
Vitas Meat Slaughterhouse stands along a street in the Tondo neighbourhood that shares it name, a housing project that was originally...
- 2 min
Rodesa
Rodesa's siblings looked frantically for her, fearing the worst, but holding on to the hope that their niece might still get her mother back
- 3 min
Allan
On 2 August, 2018, Allan was stopped at a checkpoint along Recto in Manila. The cops zeroed in on him because he was gaunt.
- 4 min
Datu Victor
I don't know how to start with the story of Datu Victor Danyan's death. I could tell you how, since Duterte imposed martial law on...
- 2 min
Nercy
Nercy's life was peppered with contradictions. You can see this in her social media posts, where she paired vaguely romantic statements...
- 3 min
Joshua
Joshua was your typical teenager. He was easy to get along with, according to his older brother Jasper. 'He had a positive mental...
- 2 min
Francis
In Metro Manila, the poor are treated the same way as the heaps of rubbish they're forced to share space with, discarded and strewn...
- 1 min
Althea
If you recently heard about the youngest victim of the drug war in the Philippines, three-year-old Myca, please let me remind you that...
- 2 min
Danica
It would be too easy to simply describe the difficult life 5-year-old Danica had. She lived in a tiny, cramped home with too many small...
- 3 min
Heart
In the drug war in the Philippines, it’s tempting to just focus on the innocent victims--little children and upstanding citizens labelled...
- 1 min
Jefferson
Life had been tough for Jefferson and his four siblings ever since they lost their father to homicide. It was the kind of life that could...
- 2 min
Oman
In the so-called war on drugs in the Philippines, who gets to judge whether a person is good or not? Is it the president, a confessed...
© Copyright 2019–2021 Joy Watford
Portraits and Stories
Those We Lost is a collection of portraits and stories of the victims of the so-called drug war in the Philippines. This site is a memorial to the murdered and a call to action for the rest of us.
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