Cardboard boxes form neat rows, from floor to ceiling, along the narrow corridors of the archive room. Each is assigned a number from one to 10. Inside are the personal accounts of thousands of victims of atrocities committed under the rule of the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. The lower numbers are the least egregious cases. Those labelled with a number nine or 10 contain the most harrowing descriptions of rape, torture and disappearances.
“My task now is, [with] all of the truth, all of the evidence I have … to preserve the records,” said Carmelo Victor A Crisanto, the executive director of the Human Rights Violations Victims’ Memorial Commission, which manages the archives. He is focused on digitising victims’ case files so that they are protected and more widely accessible to researchers.
