Time to 'transform outrage into courage,' Constitution Framer says
MANILA, Philippines — With continuing attacks against lawyers, the arrests and killings of activists and rampant red-tagging, Constitutional Framer Ed Garcia, also a petitioner against the Anti-Terrorism Act, said it is time to “transform outrage into courage.”
This comes in the wake of a violent attack against public rights lawyer and ATA counsel Angelo Karlo Guillen and the “Bloody Sunday” police raids where nine activists were killed and six others were arrested.
Petitioners against the anti-terrorism law on Tuesday amplified the call of Filipino lawyers to the Supreme Court to protect their legal counsels who are helping them in their fight against a “dangerous law.”
READ: Cheat sheet: Petitioners argue for the nullification of anti-terrorism law
“They have been killing our lawyers, our last resort, last line of defense in court and out of court. They who are the guardians and protectors of our rights. We must protect our protectors,” journalist Ma. Ceres Doyo said in a virtual press conference.
Guillen, who has been representing activists in cases filed against them, is the fourth to have survive an attack against lawyers. At least 56 other members of the legal profession were killed since the start of President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration.
Lawyers have been demanding action from the SC to stop attacks against them. They have also urged the high court to look into how the rule of law is being weaponized against activists, through a circular it issued on issuances of search warrants.
Garcia said he has seen the Philippines go through difficult times in past decades. But he never heard a presidential directive "expressed so crudely and cruelly ignore human rights or kill them all. This culture of impunity persists and the rule of law has once again broken down."
Is there something missing to prod the high court into more action? Garcia noted that while many, inclduing journalists, have shown courage "what we need in the country today is not lack of political will but lack of political imagination, especially in the time of pandemic.”
“We need to reinvent resistance,” he added.
The Constitutional Framer stressed that the primary task of human rights defenders across the globe is to “demonstrate defiant hope, to conspire, keep hope alive, reinvent resistance, reimagine our future.”
Need for new ways to communicate
Philippine Entertainment Portal editor Jo Ann Maglipon said there is a need to continue to look for ways to communicate, that old ways may be effective for one sector but may fail to reach others. Technology can also help in this, Rappler CEO Maria Ressa said.
Concerned Artist of the Philippines spokesperson Lisa Ito explained that history also plays an important role in this. “The ATA represents a big step back, in terms of what previous generations have fought for,” she said.
Ito added that they must impress upon the youth and learners a sense of history, “the weight of history that it took in order for us to reach this point.”
“We did rise up from the point of history when [freedom of expression] was taken away from us. It seems daunting at this point—talking to each other, but we know that we’re getting there,” she added.
SPECIAL REPORT: How films and art can help protect Martial Law memory from revisionism
‘Tipping point’?
In a separate press conference, rights lawyer and oralist for petitioners Evalyn Ursua expressed hope that the public may have well reached their “tipping point.”
Ursua shared that when she was in the Univesity of the Philippines law school in the 1980s, one or two lawyers would be killed a year. One death at that time was enough to earn strong remarks from their profession, she said.
“Dean Magallona said, this lawyer was recently killed. What is the [Integrated Bar of the Philippines] doing about this? A lawyer got killed. He was so angry… that was only one death,” she said.
“Right now, they are saying at least 54 recorded killings, nothing has been solved. Worse, no one is jailed, but the legal profession has yet to hold a strike. I agree this should be a tipping point,” she added.
In 2006, lawyers and law students formed Concerned Lawyers for Civil Liberties during the height of protests against then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s policies.
The group was revived in 2019, this time in protest of the Duterte administration. They are also one of the petitioners against the anti-terrorism law.
Lawyers and ATA petitioners are pinning their hopes on the SC, asking the high court to step in amid killings of the legal profession and activists and enforcement of the reviled anti-terrorism law.
In a manifestation filed earlier Tuesday, the petitioners made another push to stop the anti-terrorism law’s implementation. They told the court:
True, the country is pervaded by terror, but it is predominantly a terror wrought by the miasma of intolerance currently enveloping it and the contempt casually thrown by authorities towards those who assert the very same rights guaranteed by the Constitution in the first place—to live and think freely and peacefully, to contemplate as well as advocate alternatives to a skewed and static society, to pursue elusive justice without constant fear of being stabbed by a blunt and rusty screwdriver in the dead of the night while walking home to rush another court pleading.
- Latest
- Trending
