HRW urges int'l community to push Duterte admin to end violence amid killings of lawyers

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) is urging the international community to be more firm in pushing the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte to stop the violence amid several killings of lawyers.

In a statement on Tuesday, HRW senior researcher in the Philippines, Carlos H. Conde, said more lawyers have been killed in the five years since Duterte took office than under any other government in history.

“The international community led by the United Nations Human Rights Council needs to act more decisively to press the Duterte administration to end the violence,” Conde said.

Citing reports, Conde said that 110 lawyers were killed from 1972 to the present and 61 of those have been recorded since 2016.

Charges have been filed in only seven cases since 2004, he said, pointing out the supposed lack of accountability for serious crimes in the country.

According to Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), more than half of these cases were work-related.

The National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL) said most of the slain lawyers represented either victims of the “war on drugs” or victims of human rights violations. Almost all perpetrators have never been made accountable, the NUPL said.

Conde said many of the high-profile attacks victimized members of the NUPL, which represents leftist activists and victims of human rights violations.

In 2018, Conde said Benjamin Ramos was shot dead in Negros Occidental, where he said there is an uptick of violence against plantation labor organizers, peasant groups, and rights defenders.

Conde also cited the incident where masked men with a screwdriver stabbed Angelo Karlo Guillen, NUPL's secretary-general in Panay Island. Guillen was wounded in the attack.

Guillen had handled several rights-related cases including the police killing in December of nine members of an Indigenous Peoples’ group.

“The targeted killing of Filipinos swept up in the brutal “war on drugs” or taking part in human rights activism is bad enough,” Conde said.

“The killing of those who defend them or seek to provide their families redress adds immeasurably to the horror.”

Earlier this month, several lawyers asked the Supreme Court to help stop the attacks on members of the legal profession.

The Office of the Court Administrator has already directed judges to submit an inventory of cases involving violence against lawyers.  —Joviland Rita/KBK, GMA News