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NUPL's plea: 'Stop killing lawyers, prosecutors, judiciary members'

Philippines | National

NUPL's plea: 'Stop killing lawyers, prosecutors, judiciary members'

By Jeffrey Damicog

NUPL

Four years after the killing of one of its founders, the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) reiterated its plea for the government to put an end to attacks against lawyers, prosecutors and judges.

In a statement, NUPL President Edre U. Olalia said that since lawyer Benjamin Ramos Jr. was killed on Nov. 6, 2018 in Kabankalan, Negros Occidental, “not one has been held accountable for Ben’s murder.”

He lamented that “the hitmen are still unidentified; the masterminds remain unscathed; and there has been no progress in the investigation into his killing.”

He said: “Ben’s murder is just one of the many unsolved cases of extrajudicial killings of Filipino human rights defenders and people’s lawyers. This impunity that besieged our country — the State’s failure to hold accountable those responsible — has emboldened the continuing attacks and threats against people’s lawyers and human rights defenders.”

He noted that since 2018, “two other NUPL members were killed while other people’s lawyers have been tagged and vilified as terrorists for defending the rights and freedoms of the oppressed and marginalized.”

Ramos, Olalia said, was killed “after the incessant red-tagging and vilification he had been subjected to in Negros Occidental.”

He said that Ramos was the legal counsel of the families of nine members of the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW) who were killed on Oct. 20, 2018 inside the Hacienda Nene plantation in Sagay City, Negros Occidental.

The NFSW was accused of being affiliated with the terrorist communist organizations Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing the New People’s Army (NPA), he said.

Published reports stated that as of December 2021, at least 66 judges, prosecutors, and lawyers have been killed since July 2016.

TAGS: #NUPL #Judges, prosecutors, lawyers killed

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