by Diego Morra
Noted forensic pathologist Dr. Raquel Fortun is giving headaches to the military, the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) , which enjoys an annual budget of P8-billion, and the Marcos Jr. government as she drilled holes into the Philippine Army (PA) story that all the 19 fatalities in the April 19, 2026 Toboso, Negros Occidental encounters story were New People’s Army (NPA) guerrillas.
Aside from the changing number of firearms seized that grew from 7 to 9 and then to 20 and 24, the initial version of a rousing victory against the NPA started to wilt when the NPA admitted that 10 Red fighters perished during the prolonged AFP attack, indicating that the nine who died were all civilians. The military controlled the site of the clash and even evacuated more than 600 people from two sitios despite the conclusion of the armed clashes. These very same residents witnessed how soldiers fired at the huts where at least four of the fatalities stayed. RJ Ledesma was in that sitio along with Alyssa Alano and two others.
Drone footages also reportedly showed Roger Fabillar, the NPA commander, still alive and perhaps in no position to give battle. Worse, footages also showed how two minors were gunned down. The human rights coalition Karapatan, along with the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP), appealed to the soldiers who deployed the drones for surveillance to surrender the footages to help reconstruct what transpired in the 12 hours of fighting that the military reported. On April 29, 2026, the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) issued a statement ion Jakarta to condemn the Toboso killings. “Nine civilians were killed in Toboso, including a journalist and two minors. An operation that cannot distinguish between armed combatants and community workers is an indiscriminate attack that violates international humanitarian law. The AFP must be held accountable,” said Mercy Chriesty Barends, Member of the Indonesian House of Representatives and APHR chairperson.
“These killings follow a pattern of state-enabled repression. The Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020—allowing warrantless arrests and detention without charge—has been weaponized against journalists, activists, and community workers. The practice of red-tagging, labeling critics as communist sympathizers, operates as a precursor to violence. The AFP’s blanket labeling of all 19 victims as NPA members fits this pattern. The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility has documented 156 journalists killed in the Philippines since 1986, and Reporters Without Borders ranked the country 116th out of 180 in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index,” APHR argued.
Dr. Fortun examined five of the bodies and said all of them bore bullet entry wounds at the back. This indicates homicide, she warned. One victim, a woman, suffered three non-fatal bullet wounds but succumbed to a shot in the leg that shattered an artery and a vein. The military could have provided medical assistance to her under the rules of war but apparently did not do so. She perished due to loss of blood. Letting her die as a hors de combat is a war crime under the Geneva Convention. Dr. Fortun said one fatality had aspirated blood after being struck in the airway. She revealed that three of the fatalities were shot in the head and all of them were also hit in the trunk, upper and lower extremities. Some of the bodies were submerged in a fishpond, damaging the preservation of the remains. The abrasions and contusions of the dead, Dr. Fortun argued, “were consistent with a person who had been shot, fallen and then shot again, possibly from behind.””
What stumped the noted pathologist was that the remains were poorly handled by the military, which controlled the cadavers, and the police, with the death certificates merely saying “gunshot wounds to the head and trunk” as the causes of death. One body, purportedly that of Errol Wendel Chen, was released to his family but examination of scars, dental records and his body length, aside from the clothing, proved that the body wasn’t his. Dr. Fortun also questioned why the military continues to claim that the fatalities were positive for powder burns in paraffin tests. Other experts said anyone can place a gun on the cadavers, pulled the trigger and, presto! the dead fired a gun. Others were shown to wear ammo pouches that did not contain any ammunition. Pieces of clothing were missing or mislabeled, making ti difficult for forensic examination to reconstruct what happened on April 19 in Toboso.
It is not only Dr. Fortun who is questioning the handling of the remains. Marianne Cuison, wife of the US-based Lyle Prijoles, fumed that “nothing is transparent.” The Malaya Movement in the US also demanded an independent and thorough investigation of the Toboso killings while the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) vowed such an inquiry to determine accountability. The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) in Negros Island already named the NPA personnel martyred in Toboso while the NPA leadership promised to assess what happened. For her part, and admitted it was a “tactical defeat” that will have to be assessed. Beverly Longid, co-convenor of the International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL), condemned “the utter lack of decency and humanity of those who mock and ridicule their deaths, hiding behind claims that they were armed members of the NPA. Such claims do not justify the taking of lives, especially coming from the military, long questioned for its own record, nor do they automatically deserve unquestioned belief.”
Dr. Fortun is equally flustered by the trolls who are mocking the 19 Toboso fatalities as “corned beef.” She says “it is an insult. They aren’t corned beef but people with injuries. And anyone could suffer the same injuries.” Yet, what happened to the fatalities in Toboso is similar to the fate of the five combatants killed in Bilar, Bohol in February 2024, including Bar passer Hannah Joy Cesista. Witnesses said the five were apparently captured by the bigger military force and were led away by soldiers. Inquisitive residents were ordered to go home. A video footage taken at the scene showed the soldiers holding the handcuffed and shirtless Domingo Ompoc. Minutes, and many gunshots later, he was dead like Cesista and their colleagues Pablito Historia, Marlon Omosura and Alberto Sancho, their bloodied remains soiled by mud.#
