News Analysis
When Lawyers Are Lawyers
Most Filipinos have lost
hope in the legal profession and in the judiciary that is supposed to
uphold the law and to carry the scale of justice with fairness and “cold
blooded” neutrality. That is almost a conclusive statement - until you
realize that there is a breed of lawyers who still make a difference.
By Bobby Tuazon
Bulatlat
In the Philippines,
law still retains the prestige as the “noblest” profession. This, despite
the stigma that it has earned in a country where law is considered the
bridge to politics, corruption and instant opulence. “Rogues in robes” is
used to describe judges who bend the rules, accept bribes and convict a
poor man in order to free the filthy rich from the gallows.
Most Filipinos have
lost hope in the legal profession and in the judiciary that is supposed to
uphold the law and to carry the scale of justice with fairness and “cold
blooded” neutrality. That is almost a conclusive statement - until you
realize that there is a breed of lawyers who still make a difference.
One of these lawyers
is Felidito C. Dacut. For 18 years, Dacut, a lifetime member of the
Integrated Bar of the Philippines, was lawyering for workers in Samar,
where he was born, and in the neighboring province of
Leyte
over such labor issues as low wage and harassment. He became a member of
the Protestant Lawyers League of the Philippines (PLLP) in 1987 and had
since then been a counsel for National Federation of Free Labor Unions (Naflu),
the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW) and several other labor
and farmers unions and federations.
Dacut was later
involved in the No. 1 party-list Bayan Muna (nation first) as its regional
coordinator for Eastern Visayas.
Dacut is one lawyer
known for his compassion for the poor. He would, for instance, pay for the
transport fare of his own clients despite the fact that his legal services
were pro bono.
Last March 14, Dacut
was with a companion on board a Filcab jeepney on his way to Tacloban City
where he was going to buy milk for his daughter. A motorcycle caught up
with the jeepney and a man armed with a silencer-equipped revolver fired a
single bullet into the lawyer’s chest. Witnesses said there were two
motorcycles involved in the crime one of which had the assassin and his
motorcycle driver on board.
Dacut never made it
to the hospital. He was 51.
La
Union
At 42, Charles C.
Juloya is known in the Ilocos region as a labor and human rights lawyer.
In 2002, he served as one of the lawyers for the Cojuangco-owned La
Tondeña Distillers in Sta. Barbara, Pangasinan, some 170 kms north of
Manila.
Juloya, a former
councilor of Aringay, La Union, also successfully defended the “Abra 14,”
a group of church and lay and NGO volunteers who were charged with the
death of ex-priest Conrado Balweg in 1999. He is also defending six farmer
activists whom the police charged with criminal offenses in connection
with their alleged links to the New People’s Army (NPA).
At noon of March 22,
Juloya was crossing the highway toward his office in Barangay (village)
Benito Sur, Aringay when a man in his mid-30s and armed with a cal.45
pistol fired at him. Two of the eight shots fired hit him in the abdomen
and left foot.
The lawyer survived
the attempted assassination.
Another
well-respected lawyer, Romeo T. Capulong, was a target of assassination on
March 7 in Barangay Parukut, Quezon, Nueva Ecija. An IBP figure himself,
Capulong, now 70, hogged the headlines in 1995 when he defended Flor
Contemplacion, a Filipino caregiver hanged by Singaporean authorities.
He has been chief
legal consultant in the peace talks between government and the National
Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). He also served as senior
counsel for workers of Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac who went on strike in
November last year.
To Capulong, who
continues to serve as an UN judge ad litem, death threats are nothing new.
He was forced to go on exile in the United States to elude arrest by
Marcos agents during the dictatorship and, since the time he returned to
the country, has been the subject of military surveillance.
Martial law
Threats to the
vocation of lawyering for the poor particularly those who are involved in
public advocacy and political dissent are nothing new, either. During the
Marcos dictatorship of 1970s-1980s, scores of human rights and progressive
lawyers were silenced either by the gun, by abduction or by harassment.
Most of those who
were killed were in the military hit list. On the other hand, despite
overwhelming evidence against them, the perpetrators of the crimes – at
least those who were identified positively - were never prosecuted. This
in turn further emboldened the military in its alleged campaign to silence
critics particularly those it accuses of having links with the left. The
campaign went on from the Aquino presidency to this day.
Of late, the most
gruesome slaying of a lawyer took place on Feb. 11 last year. Juvy Magsino,
vice mayor of Naujan, Oriental Mindoro, was killed in cold blood: seven
bullets pierced through her body, three in the head. A companion, Leima
Fortuna, was also killed allegedly by military hitmen.
Only 34 when she
died, Magsino lawyered for the Mangyans as well as fisherfolk, farmers and
political activists. She chaired an environment group, Alyansa Laban sa
Mina (alliance against mining) in Naujan in its struggle against nickel
mining in her province. The lawyer’s active support for the poor earned
the ire both of the politicians and military in her province. From the
words of then Col. Jovito Palparan, 204th Brigade commander,
Magsino came under military watch.
Lawyering for the
poor has been an endangered profession under the Macapagal-Arroyo
government’s “war on terror.” Lawyers groups, particularly the PLLP and
the Free Legal Assistance Group (Flag), which was active in the Marcos
years, are tagged as “enemies of the state” in the military hit list as
attested to by the Armed Forces’ “Knowing the Enemy” power-point
presentation. By today’s militarist standards, they are thus “terrorists.”
There is repugnance in some AFP generals’ statement that it is up for the
lawyers and the other groups tagged in the hit list to prove their
innocence – or that the document serves as a warning for them not to be
associated with the Left.
IBP
resolution
In a recent
resolution, the IBP condemned the attacks against lawyers and other
unarmed dissenters as “violative of human rights and threats to the
practice of law.” Earlier, the Europe-based International Association of
People’s Lawyers (IAPL) called on the international community to condemn
the “politically-motivated” killings and asked the Macapagal-Arroyo
government “to bring the perpetrators to the bar of justice.”
This week, the
preparatory committee of the campaign for the defense of lawyers warned
that the spate of killings can terrorize lawyers and their families and
“threatens the legal profession’s capacity and will to fulfill its sworn
(professional) obligation” to help in the administration of justice and
serve their clients.
The Macapagal-Arroyo
administration is under pressure to rein in her military and stop the
senseless killings. Considering that at least 34 unarmed political
activists and critics – including church people, party-list members and
lawyers – have been slain since January this year and not a sign of
intervention is coming from the presidential palace, speculations are rife
that it is the military that is taking the upperhand at least in national
security matters. Or that the whole country has been placed – albeit
undeclared – under martial law. Bulatlat
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