It was sad to greet the New Year with the passing away of an old friend, a preacher and a long-time comrade in the struggle for human rights. Rev. Pastor Alfredo Sueno Faurillo succumbed to a fifth and final cardiac arrest on Dec. 31 at the Capitol Medical Center in Quezon City. But he left us with practical lessons on paralegal and human rights work which we sorely need during these times when the people’s rights are being viciously and blatantly violated with impunity.

BY DABET CASTAÑEDA
Bulatlat

It was sad to greet the New Year with the passing away of an old friend, a preacher and a long-time comrade in the struggle for human rights. Rev. Pastor Alfredo Sueno Faurillo succumbed to a fifth and final cardiac arrest at the Capitol Medical Center in Quezon City last December 31. He left a wife, three sons, three grandchildren and numerous friends, clients and fellow human rights advocates. But he left us with practical lessons on paralegal work which we sorely need during these times when the people’s rights are being viciously and blatantly violated with impunity.

Bulacan

It was in 1991 when Rev. Pastor Faurillo, or Fau to his colleagues and parishioners in the province of Bulacan, was first tapped by Catholic priests and co-pastors at the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) to join them in defending human rights in the province.

Fr. Anacleto Ignacio, a parish priest in the same province and Fau’s long-time colleague, said he saw in Fau a distinct kind of kasipagan (zeal).”Kung saan mayroong paglabag, nanduon si Pastor Fau,” (Where there is a violation, you would find Pasto Fau there.) he said recalling that it was Fau who would always tell them to go to a certain place if there was a report of a violation.

On the other hand, Fr. Rolly de Leon, a parish priest in the same province and current spokesperson of the Alyansa ng mga Mamamayan para sa Pantaong Karapatan (ALMMA or People’s Alliance for Human Rights), the local chapter of the human rights alliance Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of Peoples’ Rights), said it was Fau who gave paralegal trainings to his fellow human rights advocates. Fau, de Leon said, was often a resource person on the human rights orientation whether for volunteer lawyers or for farmers and fisher folk in remote barrios in Bulacan.

De Leon said Fau was instrumental in reconvening ALMMA in 1994 and in the formation of the lawyers’ group Lawyers’ for Public Interest (LPI) in 1995.

It was difficult for the people of ALMMA to let Fau go, de Leon further said, as the pastor-cum-paralegal officer was transferred to the national office of Karapatan in Metro Manila in the last quarter of 1996.

The people of Bulacan would always ask about Fau, de Leon said.

In fact, lawyers in the province would often tell ALMMA officers: “Dapat mag-develop kayo ng HR woker na katulad nya (Fau) na pinapadali ang trabaho ng mga abogado” (You should develop HR workers like Fau because he makes the work of lawyers a lot easier.) because, the lawyers said, Fau would always volunteer to do position papers for their legal cases and never failed to update the lawyers once the cases go to court.

A pastor cum rights defender

For the people of Karapatan, who took Fau as its officer in charge of providing services to victims in 1996, he was the key to confronting the difficult day-to-day tasks of searching for and providing services to victims of human rights violations; negotiating with police and military officials; and providing legal and paralegal assistance, a task that needed the depth of experience and dedication of no less than Pastor Fau.

Karapatan was newly-organized at that time when Pastor Fau joined the national office, said Marie Hilao-Enriquez, secretary-general of the human rights alliance. Most of its staff and officers, Enriquez said, were victims of human rights violations during the Marcos dictatorship but were greenhorns when it came to actual human rights work.

Pastor Fau, who was later called Pax by colleagues in the human rights community, was Karapatan’s paralegal officer. He would wake up during the wee hours of the morning to head Quick Reaction Teams (QRT) to police precincts in Metro Manila where students or youth in the communities were detained for pasting posters critical of the government. He also headed fact-finding missions (FFM) to different provinces in Luzon and some parts of the Visayas and Mindanao.

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