BY GLENDA TAYONA and CYRUS GARDE
ILOILO City – A human rights lawyer helping farmers in what has been dubbed as the “Sagay massacre” was shot multiple times by motorcycle-riding gunmen in Kabankalan City, Negros Occidental. According to the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, lawyers are now “enveloped in fear” as they seek to provide access to justice to their clients.
Atty. Benjamin Tarug Ramos Jr., 56, was declared “dead on arrival” at the Holy Mother of Mercy Hospital in Kabankalan City late Tuesday night. He had three gunshot wounds on the chest.
He was “the run-to pro-bono lawyer of peasants, environmentalists, activists, political prisoners, and mass organizations in Negros”, according to the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) which he helped establish.
Months prior to the shooting, Ramos – also the secretary general of NUPL’s Negros Occidental chapter – was a victim of red-tagging. Public posters tagged him as a member of the New People’s Army.
“These beastly attacks by treacherous cowards cannot go on. Not a few of our members have been attacked and killed before while literally practicing their profession and advocacies in the courts, in rallies, in picket lines, in urban poor communities, and in fact-finding missions,” according to the NUPL.
Just last week, a kidnapping case was filed against human rights lawyer Kathy Panguban who also assisted farmers and rights advocates in the aftermath of the Sagay massacre. The police alleged that Panguban kidnapped a 14-year-old survivor of the massacre but NUPL maintained that the survivor was in the rightful custody of her mother.
“It is a painful price we have to pay sometimes in the service of the people and as a pledge to the next generations we will leave behind,” according to NUPL.
‘WHO WILL DEFEND THE DEFENDERS?’
NULP described Ramos as a “passionate, dedicated and articulate yet amiable and jolly.”
“But who will defend the defenders?” it asked.
The national leadership of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) condemned the murder of Ramos.
“We decry this latest incident in a quick succession of violent attacks against lawyers, who are now enveloped in fear as they seek to provide access to justice to their clients. Our pens and typewriters are helpless against guns and bullets that have tilted the scales of justice alarmingly in favor of impunity and lawlessness, all in arrant disregard of the sanctity of human life,” IBP said in a statement.
Governments are required to provide protection to lawyers under international law. IBP urged duly constituted authorities to solve Ramos’ case with competence and dispatch.
“Lawyers, prosecutors and judges are being targeted with surging frequency and impunity. Each unsolved and un-prosecuted murder of the officers of our courts of law is an attack against the rule of law. It cripples or paralyzes the moving parts of the justice system upon the well-founded apprehension that the attacks are a direct result of the discharge of their functions,” according to the IBP.
‘PREMEDITATED’
Ramos, a resident of Barangay Binicuil, Kabankalan City, was heading home from a friend’s house when attacked by riding-in-tandem assassins around 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday on Rojas Street, Barangay 5.
According to Chief Inspector Rey Molas, Kabankalan City deputy police chief, Ramos’ wife Clarissa was seeking an autopsy.
“We assure the family of the victim of a thorough investigation to ensure the immediate arrest of the perpetrators,” said Chief Superintendent John Bulalacao, director of the Police Regional Office 6.
NUPL president Atty. Edre Olalia believed Ramos’ killing was planned.
“We are shocked, devastated and enraged at the premeditated, cold-blooded murder of our colleague,” Olalia said in a statement.
NULP-Panay Chapter shared the same sentiment. “Prior to the attack, Atty. Ramos was tagged a ‘communist’ in a state-instigated vilification campaign,” read part of the statement signed by NUPL-Panay president Atty. Rene Estocapio.
“Like the EJKs (extrajudicial killing) of drug suspects, attacks on human rights advocates follow a pattern – they start with public mind-conditioning vilification campaign,” according to NUPL-Panay.
Ramos was the third lawyer killed by unidentified gunmen in Western Visayas this year. Atty. Edeljulio Romero of Iloilo City was gunned down in Roxas City on Sept. 28 after a court hearing. Atty. Rafael Atotubo, 62, was shot in front of his house in Bacolod City on Aug. 23. He handled drug cases.
According to NUPL, it had recorded nine attacks on lawyers this year, excludes those on judges who were also lawyers.
‘ACT WITH URGENCY’
The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) urged the government to “proceed with active measures that would protect the safety of human rights defenders who continue to serve this country’s most vulnerable and marginalized.”
According to CHR spokesperson Jacqueline de Guia, authorities must “act with urgency in pinning down the perpetrators” in Ramos’ killing.
She sounded alarm over the attacks on human rights defenders, noting that Ramos had been targeted by a vilification campaign in April as a communist in posters.
CHR stressed that regardless of Ramos’ affiliations, he was “a human and a Filipino whose rights was supposed to be protected by the government, including his right to life.”/PN
