The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) has pressed the government for the immediate resolution of cases involving attacks against lawyers, particularly those injured or killed for their human rights advocacies.
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The Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) on Thursday, March 4, rallied all lawyers to continue performing courageously their sworn duty amidst what it calls “the pandemic of criminality.”
(Panay Today/Tara Yap/ MANILA BULLETIN)
“We, lawyers, only perform the duties we sworn to do and seek to uphold the rule of law regardless who we represent. We are not cowered by a series of attacks against members of the bench and the bar. But we denounce the formative culture of subjecting lawyers to attack for enforcing the rights of the people,” said Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP-Iloilo Chapter) in a statement released Thursday, March 4. Guillen, who is assistant vice president for the Visayas of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), was stabbed with a screwdriver on his head past 9 p.m. of March 3 after he got out of his vehicle along Gen. Luna Street.
(Panay Today via Tara Yap)
National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL) Visayas Vice President Rene Estopacio said that Guillen, the counsel in one of the 37 petitions filed with the Supreme Court (SC) against the constitutionality of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) of 2020, survived the attack by two masked men.
Published reports stated the Guillen has been handling several political cases like that involving the Tumandok indigenous people.
“He (Guillen) also represents activists and human rights defenders facing trumped up charges in court including the activists arrested during the police raids in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental in October 2019 and the Tumandoks arrested in Panay in December 2020,” Estopacio said in a statement.