Initial findings from the autopsy of five Negros 19 massacre victims found a misidentified body, missing and mislabelled clothes, Forensic Pathologist Dr. Raquel Fortun said in a press conference Thursday, May 7, at the Student Union Building in UP Diliman.

Out of 19 victims brutally massacred by the 79th Infantry Battalion of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), five were flown from Negros Occidental on April 25 and 26 for the autopsy requested by their kin.

Fortun said three of the bodies were already in moderate to advanced decomposition when they arrived, while two were in the early stages.

One of the bodies, initially named Errol Wendel, was found to be misidentified when compared with his characteristics.

“Everything was off,” Fortun said. “’Yong body length hindi tumugma sa height niya. ‘Yong ngipin hindi tumugma. ‘Yong mga peklat hindi tumugma.”

Even the clothes labelled as his, according to Wendel’s sibling, were not something he would wear.

Fortun said the clothes would have helped identify where they were shot, but she only received two bags — one of which was mislabelled. 

“So you ask that question, ‘What happened? Bakit ganun?’ Nawala ‘yong damit tapos ‘yong labeling niyo,” Fortun said.”May nagsabi sa akin: nilagyan lang daw ng number tapos binigyan ng pangalan. Was there anything done to document, to make sense of these bodies, kung sino talaga sila?” 

She also said some families were not shown the faces of their deceased loved ones. They were just released to them without basis of their identification.

Wendel’s family has yet to recover his remains more than three weeks after his killing. 

Fortun appealed to the victims’ families to allow the remaining bodies to be autopsied, so they can examine each one to obtain more information about the massacre and find Wendel’s remains.

She said the condition of the victims’ remains and the lack of proper documentation of the scene have made it hard to fully uncover what happened at this time. Fortun said her team will soon release a full report detailing their analysis.

“Proper recovery, handling, disposition of the dead bodies, the bodies are evidence. You must hear the version of the dead. Hindi puwedeng ‘yong buhay lang ang pakikinggan mo,” Fortun said. 

She added that it’s hard to do her job in the Philippines, where the killers are also the ones who control the investigations. 

“We are not doing science-based investigation, and nobody questions,” Fortun said. “’Pag hindi kayo nagtanong, nakakalusot. Walang accountability. Patayan lang nang patayan. And anong tawag dito? Impunity.”

Fortun said that fact-finding teams, led by the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), will be conducting an investigation in Toboso, Negros Occidental. 

In a statement by CHR on April 26, it said it has initiated an independent investigation through its office in the Negros Island Region. The Commission urges all parties “to cooperate fully with the CHR investigation, preserve evidence, ensure unimpeded access to information and sites, and comply strictly with [International Humanitarian Law] and human rights standards.”

Rights group Karapatan echoed the call for an independent investigation during a press conference last April 29 with advocates and relatives of the victims of the Negros 19 massacre, where they discussed alleged violations of International Humanitarian Law committed by the AFP.