"The number of lawyers killed has soared by 500 percent since President Rodrigo Duterte came into power."
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." This line from William Shakespeare's "Henry VI," is what the character Dick the Butcher suggested is the solution that could be employed by pretenders to the throne to make society easier to govern. One view says it's a criticism of how lawyers maintain the privilege of the wealthy and the powerful; another is that it's a rejection of bureaucracy and perversions of the rule of law.
Whatever it is, it's apparently the same solution being applied by unseen hands to send a chilling message to lawyers who are perceived as way too overzealous in keeping true to their oath.
And what is that oath? It goes in part: to "maintain allegiance to the Republic of the Philippines; support the Constitution and obey the laws as well as the legal orders of the duly constituted authorities therein; do no falsehood, nor consent to the doing of any in court; not wittingly or willingly promote or sue any groundless, false or unlawful suit, or give aid nor consent to the same; delay no man for money or malice, and will conduct myself as a lawyer according to the best of my knowledge and discretion, with all good fidelity as well to the courts as to my clients…" These are sacred words that the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP)—the mandatory organization of all lawyers in the country—obviously takes to heart. It was therefore not surprising that the group deemed it fitting to appeal to authorities anew to protect members of the country’s legal community.
And why did the IBP do so? Because the number of lawyers killed has soared by 500 percent since President Rodrigo Duterte came into power in 2016 as compared to the past six administrations.
“The IBP grieves and is appalled by the increasing and sheer number of assassinations of lawyers, judges, and prosecutors with impunity,” the group said. “In stark contrast, the number of lawyers killed during the previous administrations, stretching back to 1972, was [about] 10 for each administration,” they added.
The IBP issued the statement a week after one of its members, lawyer Sitti Gilda Mahinay-Sapie, and her husband, Muhaimen Mohammad Sapie, were gunned down just outside their house in Davao City, the President’s hometown. She was the 63rd lawyer slain under the Duterte administration. We saw for ourselves on TV the video of the shooting and it appears that the couple were liquidated by a sniper from afar.
Sapie’s killing happened just three weeks after Deputy City Prosecutor Victor Begtang Jr. of Ilagan City, Isabela province, was shot dead by a still-unidentified gunman right inside his house in Conner, Apayao province, on June 23. Begtang was the ninth public prosecutor murdered since 2016.
All this prompted the IBP to urge the government to "formulate and implement specific measures to improve the security of lawyers, judges and prosecutors and to expeditiously resolve [the] investigation on these killings so that the perpetrators are swiftly and truly held accountable." The group said they would closely coordinate with the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice, the National Bureau of Investigation and the Philippine National Police in resolving these violent attacks on members of the bar and the bench.
We commend the Supreme Court for coming out recently with a strong statement condemning the series of harassment and violent assaults on lawyers. “To threaten our judges and our lawyers is no less than an assault on the judiciary…To assault the judiciary is to shake the very bedrock on which the rule of law stands. This cannot be allowed in a civilized society like ours. This cannot go undenounced on the court’s watch,” they said. We agree completely.
PH is one of the least safe countries
While at this, we're not surprised that the latest survey conducted by Global Finance, an international business magazine, showed the Philippines ranks at the bottom of the world's 134 safest countries.
In the magazine's ranking of the world’s safest countries, the Philippines again was at the bottom of its list just like in its 2019 list which evaluated 128 nations.
The magazine said it took into account three fundamental factors to determine the countries’ safety scores—war and peace, personal security, and natural disaster risk, including factors related to COVID-19.
The Philippines was given a score of 14.8899, just a few decimal points higher than Colombia which ranked 133rd with a score of 14.8461. The higher a country’s score is, the lower it is in terms of ranking.
“Countries with serious civil conflict that have high risks from a natural disaster such as the Philippines, Nigeria, Yemen, and El Salvador all reported relatively low death tolls from COVID-19, yet performed poorly in terms of safety overall,” the publication said.
Nigeria, Yemen, and El Salvador ranked 131st, 126th, and 124th, respectively, joining the Philippines at the bottom of the list.
Iceland topped the list as the safest country with an index score of 3.9724. It was followed by the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Finland, Mongolia, Norway, Denmark, Canada, and New Zealand.
Filipinos must deal not only with natural calamities, such as typhoons that lead to flooding and landslides, earthquakes and volcano eruptions. We also face the dire prospect of death or injury from armed rebellion and criminality, including vigilante killings. And now, we have the COVID-19 pandemic that has so far killed 26,000 Filipinos, and a host of other diseases that exact a heavy human toll every year.
Given all this, the question that should be asked is: What is the government going to address the three-fold danger faced by all Filipinos, so that we can emerge from the dark hole that we occupy with other countries that are considered least safe in the world?