Philippine Military Has ‘Itching Bullet’ for Unruly Protesters
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MANILA — Philippine military researchers have unveiled a new “itching bullet” packed with fruit sap that will incapacitate political protesters but cause them no permanent harm.
The bullets can’t kill, the state-run news agency reported Tuesday, but they can make a person “suffer extreme itchiness all over his body for several hours.”
The “Lipay itching bullet,” Col. Jose Villalobos, chief of the military’s Research and Development Center said, is designed to stop demonstrators in their tracks without killing or maiming them.
The bullet is actually a 12-gauge shotgun shell with the powder charge and lead content reduced and supplemented with an ingredient from the sap of the wild Lipay fruit of the southern Philippines. The fruit also is called the gogo or bulugo fruit.
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