Autopsies show bullets struck protesting farmers, say lawyers

The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) will come out before the end of this month with the results of its fact-finding investigation into the bloody dispersal of farmer-protesters in Kidapawan City, North Cotabato, on April 1.

CHR Chair Chito Gascon refused to comment on what the team had concluded so far, but a forensic report made known to the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL) revealed that bullet wounds in the head and trunk—not injuries due to rocks or heat stroke, as authorities earlier speculated—killed two protesters at the Kidapawan rally.

Gascon said the fact-finding team needed another week to finish their job due to the voluminous data compiled during their week-long probe of the violent dispersal that left three dead and scores wounded. The police then jailed up to 70 protesters, including women and children.

The CHR chief earlier said they would look into why the police used  high-powered guns to disperse farmers protesting the failure of the government to provide them with food and help them cope with the drought.

‘Shots killed them’

The NUPL revealed yesterday that the two protesters killed in the dispersal sustained fatal gunshot wounds in the head and trunk.

In a phone interview with the Inquirer, NUPL secretary general Edre Olalia said this was the initial result of an  independent autopsy and external examination conducted on April 9 by forensic pathologist Raquel Fortun on the bodies of farmer Darwin Sulang, 22, and bystander Enrico Fabligar, 30.

Interior Secretary Mel Senen Sarmiento, in an interview with the media on April 4, said the two protesters died of “heat stroke” and “a head injury possibly from rocks.” He also said the police only fired “warning shots” to rescue a civil disturbance management staffer “pinned down” by protesters.

But Fortun’s autopsy on Sulang, Olalia said, showed that he sustained “a  single perforating gunshot wound almost in the middle of the forehead which exited at top back of the head,” while an external examination of Fabligar’s body showed a “single penetrating gunshot wound of the trunk.”

Olalia noted that these findings were “different from public statements” made by the police and Sarmiento. Earlier, no less than PNP Director General Ricardo Marquez said that one of the slain protesters, referring to Sulang, had tested positive for gunpowder residue in a paraffin exam, and that police wounded in the clash had also sustained gunshot wounds.