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.

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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