HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Defending the Lawyers
Just like journalists,
lawyers are now considered an endangered species. Bulatlat got an
exclusive interview with a human rights lawyer who was shot eight times in
broad daylight. The increasing number of killed lawyers prompted the
Integrated Bar of the Philippines and various lawyers’ groups to not just
condemn the killings but also to do something about the situation.
BY DABET CASTAÑEDA
Bulatlat
Lawyer Charlie
Juloya pores over legal documents and his students’ notebooks in his
hospital bed
Photo by Dabet
Castañeda |
He read the day’s newspaper, checked
his students’ notebooks and signed various legal documents to be submitted
to court the next day. If not for a small waste bag attached to his
stomach and the hospital bed where he lay, the suite at an undisclosed
hospital in Metro Manila could have been mistaken for a law office.
The patient, lawyer Charles Juloya,
42, has been kept under tight security after he survived an assassination
attempt last March 22 in Aringay, La Union, 244 kms north of Manila. In
the past, he refused to talk to the media about what happened. However,
after almost a month of recuperating in the hospital, Juloya granted this
exclusive interview to Bulatlat.
The lawyer’s account
“Pumapayat pero okay lang
(getting thin but doing okay)” was how he described himself a month after
a lone gunman tried to kill him just across his law office in Aringay.
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At high noon last March 22 as he
parked his car beside a carinderia (food stop), Juloya said an
assassin armed with a .38 caliber pistol approached him and shot him eight
times, hitting his right leg and abdomen.
With blood oozing from his body, he
said that he ran toward a sidewalk canal for cover while looking at his
assassin who walked away casually. The assassin crossed the busy national
highway and faded into the crowd as he went toward the public market.
The police response was late, he said,
even if there was an outpost 15 meters away from the scene of the crime.
Barangay (village) officials were also not there as the Barangay Hall,
according to a witness, was closed that day. It was his secretary and some
bystanders who brought him to the hospital, he recalled.
Chilling effect
Although Juloya alleged that his
political opponents were behind his failed assassination, a group of
concerned lawyers who compose the Preparatory Committee of the campaign
for the defense of lawyers expressed concern over the recent attacks
against their colleagues.
Juloya was attacked eight days after
another lawyer, Felidito Dacut from Tacloban, Leyte (Eastern Visayas), was
shot to death by unidentified men. Both lawyers handled human rights cases
and labor disputes pro bono (free of charge).
It may be recalled that human rights
lawyer and United Nations judge Romeo Capulong experienced harassments and
a failed assassination while in his hometown in Nueva Ecija on March 9.
The International Association of People’s Lawyers (IAPL), in a statement
last March 29, said that the attempt on his life may be linked, among
others, to his role as senior counsel of the striking workers of the
country’s largest sugar estate, Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac City (125 kms
north of Manila).
The most heinous attack in recent
years, the group of concerned lawyers said, was the ambush-slaying of
lawyer Juvy Magsino, vice mayor of Naujan, Mindoro Oriental “whose public
interest lawyering caught the ire of the military.”
In a forum sponsored by the Pro-People
Law Network (PLN) on April 18 at the University of the Philippines College
of Law, Atty. Neri Javier Colmenares said these series of attacks send a
chilling effect on lawyers.
“These completely paralyze the lawyers
and the causes they choose to defend,” he said. Colmenares is a human
rights lawyer and a political prisoner for four years under Martial Law.
The attacks on lawyers are nothing new
as shown by the list of lawyers whose rights were violated. Documents from
the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG) showed that 11 lawyers were
murdered from 1984 to 1992. This included labor lawyer and leader Rolando
Olalia in 1986.
In 2004, two lawyers of the Public
Attorney’s Office were killed while two judges, Tanaun Regional Trial
Court (RTC) Judge Voltaire Rosales and Tabuk RTC Judge Milnar Lammawin,
were also killed last year.
Threats to civil liberties
In the same forum, Dean Pacifico
Agabin of the Lyceum College of Law said the attacks against them are also
attacks on civil liberties. “The Macapagal- Arroyo administration is
developing a culture of ignoring civil liberties,” he said.
Among the distinct threats to civil
liberties, he said, is the surveillance of the so-called “enemies of the
state” as listed by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in a slide
presentation titled “Knowing the Enemy.”
The list of so-called enemies included
media organizations National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP)
and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ); church
groups like the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP);
lawyers groups like the FLAG; rightist soldiers’ group and veterans
groups; peasant and labor groups; and progressive party-list groups.
Since the start of the year, four
journalists have been killed while two were wounded in assassination
attempts. Priests belonging to the Iglesia Filipina Independiente (IFI or
Independent Church of the Philippines) in the province of Tarlac have been
reportedly listed in the military’s “Order of Battle” since 2004 and have
been experiencing harassment to this day after Fr. William Tadena was
killed last March 13.
Agabin also said that the AFP and the
Philippine National Police (PNP) have been instrumental in curtailing
civil liberties. He noted that the PNP admitted setting up around 3,000
wiretaps from 1999 to 2001 which included various journalists and leaders
of people’s organizations.
The Intelligence Services of the AFP (ISAFP)
is, in fact, mandated by law to conduct surveillance and information
gathering activities about perceived and actual threats to national
security, he said.
“Of course, lawyers among us know that
these surveillance operations are a blatant violation of the guarantee
against unreasonable searches and seizures in the Constitution, including
the privacy to communication and correspondence,” he said.
He added that even if Congress has
long repealed the anti-subversion law, a number of left-leaning
organizations were put on surveillance, and their leaders have been
assassinated.
Since the start of the year, the human
rights group Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of Peoples’ Rights)
has documented 32 cases of politically-motivated killings and five cases
of involuntary disappearances.
In defense
The recent developments have propelled
experienced lawyers, young lawyers who have just passed the Bar Exams and
law students to close ranks to campaign for the defense of lawyers.
They have recently filed a resolution
to the IBP National Convention held in Baguio City this week that called
on the IBP to condemn the attacks against lawyers, or any unarmed
dissenters. According to them, these attacks violate human rights and are
threats to the practice of law. The resolution also encouraged the IBP
members to render assistance in the investigation of these attacks.
In response, incoming IBP President
Leonard de Vera said that he will make it imperative for the IBP to field
in two to three full-time lawyers for every lawyer or journalist killed.
In reaction, Juloya said the
initiatives are a good start. “Lawyers are becoming victims. Dapat lang
i-defend nila ang sarili nila (It is necessary that they defend
themselves),” he said.
After his third operation on April 21,
he was told he could go home after five days. Despite the continuous
threats to his life, he said he hopes to get back to full-time lawyering
in June. Bulatlat
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