The series of killings and attacks on fiscals over the past few years drew condemnation from no less than the prosecutors and employees of the Department of Justice on Friday.
To dramatize their protest, the DoJ employees and prosecutors wore black, including those who are conducting preliminary investigations and hearings, while hearing a mass inside the DOJ main building.
Earlier, the Prosecutors League of the Philippines, a nationwide organization of government prosecutors, urged President Rodrigo Duterte and Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II to bring the perpetrators of attacks on fiscals to justice.
In a statement, the PLP condemned the series of ambushes, some of them deadly, on prosecutors from May 2013 to September 2017.
The PLP cited, among others, the death of Quezon Assistant Provincial Prosecutor Reymund Luna who was killed on Sept. 29 while on his way home from court hearings.
Luna was the sixth prosecutor killed in the last 11 months.
Mati City Prosecutor Rolando Acido, on the other hand, was gunned down by two unidentified men on board a motorcycle while on his way to the Mati Hall of Justice on Oct. 26 last year.
On Jan. 11, Quezon City prosecutor Johanne Noel Mingoa, who used to work for Aguirre when he was still in private practice, was killed in front of a restaurant in Barangay Old Balara, Quezon City.
Four months later, Caloocan Assistant City Prosecutor Diosdado Azarcon was killed by masked gunmen on May 22 outside his residence in Barangay 63, Caloocan.
Rizal Assistant Provincial Prosecutor Maria Ronatay was also gunned down during heavy traffic along Ortigas Avenue Extension in Taytay town on July 18 while former Mandaluyong City prosecutor Pablito Gahol was killed outside of a school in Mandaluyong on Sept. 3.
“We are outraged by these unfortunate and untoward events exposing government prosecutors to risks and perils of being ambushed and killed as we share the grief and sorrow of the families of these senseless incidents,” the PLP said.
Such brutality, the PLP said, “will not weaken our resolve as prosecutors for the people of the Philippines.”
Expressing solidarity with the organization, Aguirre granted on Tuesday the request of the PLP for prosecutors to wear black on Friday to condemn the series of killings of prosecutors.
Aguirre added that all prosecution offices nationwide may require their employees and staff to wear black “only to express their grief.”