Pornthip Rojanasunand
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Khunying Pornthip Rojanasunand (born 1955) is a flamboyant Thai forensic pathologist, author and human rights activist. She has repeatedly publicly stated that she has come across evidence of police abuses during her work.
Pornthip is acting deputy director of the Justice Ministry's Forensic Science Institute in Bangkok and introduced DNA evidence to Thailand.
Before her public criticism, autopsies of victims of alleged police abuse were carried out in the police's own forensic institute; this has since changed. During the government's anti-drug campaign in early 2003, over 1000 people vanished or were killed; Pornthip has shown that several of these deaths were caused by police.
She wrote several books about her work. Easily the most prominent pathologist of Thailand, she gets regular media coverage with her allegations of abuse and her somewhat unorthodox appearance: red and orange hair, eccentric clothing and makeup, platform shoes. The Thai English-language newspaper The Nation chose Pornthip, along with Chuwit Kamolvisit and Chote Wattanachet, as persons of the year for 2003.
In the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, Pornthip took charge of the effort to identify victims of the tsunami in the Phang Nga region. She and her team were widely praised for their hard work and dedication, but on January 13 2005 Police General Nopadol Somboonsab complained that the police's identification centre in Phuket should have charge of all identification operations. Many commentators and Pornthip herself attributed the late intervention to Nopadol's personal vendetta against her [1] (http://www.nationmultimedia.com/search/page.arcview.php?clid=2&id=111036&usrsess=). Nopadol was ultimately successful, and the Phang Nga operation was closed down on February 3 2005 [2] (http://www.nationmultimedia.com/search/page.arcview.php?clid=3&id=111325&usrsess=).