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Last Tuesday night, human rights lawyer Benjamin Ramos, who had helped the families of the nine farm workers massacred in a hacienda in the town of Sagay on October 20, was shot dead by a biker tandem near his home in Kabangkalan. He was a founding member of the National Union of People's Advocates (NUPL) and General Secretary of his Negros Occidental section.
His assassination has enormous implications and consequences can be drawn from the denunciations made by the NUPL, the Philippine Bar Association (the National Bar Association) and its regional offices, the national and international human rights groups. 39, Human Rights Commission, Philippine National Police and Malacañang.
The secretary of justice, Menardo Guevarra, said that he had ordered the National Bureau of Investigations to determine whether there was "any indication that the incident is related to the assassination previous farmers "in the city of Sagay. This is a positive step on the part of the government.
Related issues that require serious attention are:
Before Ramos was killed, Sagay police had filed a complaint for "abduction and serious illegal detention" against another NUPL lawyer, Katherine Panguban, after helping the mother of a 14-year-old boy surviving the massacre recover custody of his mother. son. On November 4, Colonel Benedict Arevalo, recently appointed commander of the 303rd Infantry Brigade of the Philippine Army in Negros, insulted himself against Panguban and the Allied Rights Alliance. 39, Karapatan man about the alleged abduction. In a press release, Arevalo called Karapatan, who had organized an investigation mission on the Sagay massacre, a "supporter of the NPA terrorists".
At a press conference of survivors of the massacre last Wednesday, Panguban and the young survivor's mother denied the kidnapping charge. They showed the media a written document on the turnover of cases in detention, signed on October 25 by themselves and an official of the office of social protection and development of the city of Sagay. The boy's biological father, who, according to the police, was behind the abduction, himself signed the document as a witness.
Also on Wednesday, at a press conference in Cebu, NUPL-Visayas vice-president Ian Sapayan said the Negros Oriental police had distributed leaflets naming Ramos and 60 other people from Negros as members of the Communist Party of the Philippines.
NUPL President Edre Olalia revealed that recently members of the pro-bono group of lawyers have received death threats for handling cases of "suspected political prisoners, rebels, environmentalists, and drug users." ". The NUPL and its principal officers, he added, have been "increasingly labeled and pejoratively labeled by police, army, militia, fanatical columnists and online trolls, in flagrant disregard for basic principles about the role of lawyers in society ".
Olalia may have referred to the United Nations Basic Principles on the Role of the Bar, adopted in September 1990 by the Eighth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders. The document prescribes two requirements for UN member states:
• That governments ensure that lawyers are able to perform all their professional duties without intimidation, obstruction, harassment or undue interference; and
• State authorities provide adequate guarantees when the safety of lawyers is threatened by the performance of their duties.
The same principles were invoked by lawyers in 2012, when IBP President Roan Libarios observed that in the last 10 years at least 200 lawyers and judges had been shot in cold blood . He added that most of the cases remained unresolved, as the police authorities declared "the lack of evidence and witnesses", "thus creating a feeling of helplessness among the general public".
The Philippine government has continued to ignore these universal obligations, said Olalia, pointing out that Ramos was the 34th-ranked lawyer under President Duterte's 28-month rule. "To the exclusion of judges and prosecutors, he is the 24th member of the profession killed and the 8th in the Visayas," he said.
"These attacks of beasts by treacherous cowards can not continue," said Olalia. "Many of our members have already been attacked and killed while literally exercising their profession and plea in court, at rallies, on picket lines, in poor urban communities, and during misdemeanors. establishment of facts.
In recent years, NUPL has campaigned for an end to attacks on human rights lawyers who have been murdered or attacked in various ways because of their work and their activities as "advocates of the people".
The campaign was supported by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL), the European Association of Jurists for Democracy and Human Rights in the World, European Democrat Lawyers, of the Institute of the European Bar of Human Rights and other progressive law groups in the United States. and other countries.
In 2015, the IADL's Law Enforcement Watch Committee released its first report, entitled "Attacks on Lawyers: A Threat to Democracy". This report focused on lawyers in the Philippines and covered the period from 1 January 1999 to 31 December. , 2014.
The report has collected its data in Filipino media reports, the report of a 2006 law firm investigating lawyers, the report of the UN Special Rapporteur on killings extrajudiciaries in 2007, Philip Alston, IBP, NUPL, Karapatan, PNP, and interviews with activists, academics, lawyers and others.
The 15-year period covered is the 108-month Gloria Arroyo government and 54-month Benigno Aquino III government. During this period, the AIPD report identified 114 lawyers in total, including 23 judges, 8 prosecutors and 83 lawyers.
The study period under the Arroyo regime was twice as long as that under the Aquino administration. Moreover, the number of lawyers killed under Arroyo – 78 – was twice as high as that of lawyers killed less than three quarters of the custody of Aquino – 36.
Now consider this: In the first 28 months of his tenure, Duterte has already killed 34 lawyers, two fewer than those killed in 54 months under P-Noy. The current president, a compañero, is it determined to exceed the accumulated count under his predecessor?
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Posted in Philippine Star
November 10, 2018
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