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Travel

The Philippines' Cemetery Slums

VICE Japan visited a massive slum on the outskirts of Manila where an estimated 6,000 people currently live and work amid graves and human bones.

Like many of its Asian neighbors, the Philippines has been site of rapid economic growth over the past two decades. Following a period of martial law and strict control over rural provinces, peasants and farmers began moving to the nation's capital, Manila, in the 1980s looking for better lives. However, many of these people remained on the margins of both society and the city itself. As the population boomed, slums began cropping up.

VICE Japan traveled to Manila in order to investigate conditions in one such slum inside Navotas Cemetery, where 6,000 men, women, and children currently live amid the graves and excavated human bones.