When his word is the law

OVER the weekend Senator Leila De Lima denounced the red-tagging of a lawyer based in Zambales province on a Facebook page that has been prominent in the campaigns of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict.

Lawyer Carlos Castillo Jr. was effectively branded as a terrorist by the Facebook page Lakbay Kapayapaan. “For responding to the call for urgent legal assistance of arrested youth activists, Atty. Castillo is now being called a terrorist,” De Lima said.

Reports have it that Castillo is a member of the legal aid committee of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) in Zambales. He had responded to the call for assistance made by members of the League of Filipino Students who were arrested at a checkpoint in Zambales while on their way to a Labor Day rally in Angeles City in Pampanga on May 1.

These students were arrested on very minor alleged offenses. Atty. Castillo was instrumental in facilitating their bail and subsequent release.

Lawyers who volunteer for the IBP legal aid program attend to those who cannot afford legal services. They are like lawyers who work for the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO), the major difference being that IBP legal aid volunteers do so without salary.

The legal aid program is meant to provide access to justice. Court dockets are clogged because of the acute lack of legal representation for the poor.

Legal assistance is dependent on the economic status of the applicant. It is not a function of the political beliefs or gravity of the offense committed by the client. Most important of all, a client’s crime is not shared by his lawyer. A lawyer defending a client against an accusation of rape is not himself a rapist.

It is a basic principle sanctioned by the United Nations that lawyers must not be identified with their clients or their clients’ causes as a result of discharging their functions. The UN requires that where the security of lawyers is threatened as a result of discharging their functions, they shall be adequately safeguarded by the authorities.

All it should take is for the President to denounce the red-tagging or drug-tagging of lawyers. His brethren in the profession are aching for protection from the President whose word is taken as law by those who serve in law enforcement.

The Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG) has noted that 61 lawyers, prosecutors and judges have so far been killed in five years of the Duterte administration. This figure is higher than all the recorded attacks on lawyers under six former presidents of the Philippines.

A few arrests have been effected, but there have been no convictions so far against the alleged perpetrators of these heinous offenses. Most of these cases remain unsolved to this day.

We must all recall instances when the police had acted upon the mere say-so of the President even without clear legislation to implement. The police arrested people caught vaping or using e-cigarettes despite the absence of a law banning or regulating them. The PNP shut down all lotto outlets in 2019 upon the mere televised orders of the President.

We recall that earlier this year the Calbayog Police wrote to the Calbayog City Regional Trial Court (RTC) Clerk of Court asking for names of lawyers who allegedly represent Communist Terrorist Group personalities, their affiliations, client’s name, case filed, case status, and a “mode of neutralization”.  

All this red-tagging against client and lawyer will continue unabated until the President openly denounces them as a short-cut that the law does not allow./PN