Attorney Ben Ramos, the people’s lawyer
The assassination of a lawyer in the Philippines is a newsworthy story but it is something that rarely lands in the pages of a US newspaper. One such story is about the killing of Attorney Benjamin Ramos Jr., 56, on November 6 in Kabankalan City, Negros Occidental. The story came out on Page A6 of the New York edition of the New York Times the following day.
Attorney Ben was not only a fellow member of the National Union of People’s Lawyers, he was one of the founding members of our group. He had been red-tagged several times because of the clients he had. His clients were usually poor farmers and activists. In this country, even in the 21st century, a lawyer who has such clients is regarded by dim-witted rightist elements as being a communist or an NPA sympathizer.
Attorney Ben’s colleagues at the NUPL describe him as passionate, dedicated and articulate, yet amiable and jolly. Those were the qualities that helped him do his job and earned him the trust of clients. Apparently these were not enough to keep him alive.
The dimwits who took his life knew that he never carried a gun nor bothered to employ security. He was just a lawyer doing his job and never even extrajudicially crossed anybody. How could anyone dare to take his life?
“These are dangerous times,” declares Edre Olalia, president of NUPL. Cebu-based lawyer Ian Anthony Sapayan, NUPL vice president for the Visayas, tagged the murder of Attorney Ben as prima facie “state-sponsored.” But Malacañang also quickly condemned the murder and then promised a thorough investigation.
Really, what can we expect from a government with dismal record (to say the least) of solving extrajudicial killings? But I still hope the authorities bring to justice the perpetrators of this brazen and cowardly act – one that has caught the attention of the international press like the New York Times and Al Jazeera, and also the European Union.
My colleague in UP Cebu, lecturer and journalist Connie Fernandez-Brojan of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, wrote a good story on Attorney Ben which may help explain why the killing of a lawyer caught that kind of attention only now despite the killing already of 33 others before him since the start of President Duterte’s term. Her story did more than what the New York Times wrote about Attorney Ben’s kind, those who “specialize in doing no-cost work for poor clients whose families have been targeted by the police, soldiers and death squads associated with the president’s drug war.”
“He could have chosen a more comfortable life,” Connie wrote. “But Benjamin “Ben” Ramos Jr. decided to take the road less traveled as an advocate for farmers and human rights victims, taking up their cases pro bono and earning powerful enemies.”
His three children studied in public schools. And many times, he would borrow a vehicle just to make it to his court hearings on time. “For his services, most of his clients — peasants and fisherfolk — could only give him bananas, fish, chicken, vegetables and sometimes Christmas lanterns,” Connie wrote.
The saddest for me in that story was this part: “Ben would never be able to see their eldest daughter, a Biology student at the University of the Philippines Iloilo, graduate next year — a family milestone that he was looking forward to.”
Attorney Ben chose the life he lived because he was motivated by his passion for the poor farmers and for justice and land reform in feudal Negros Island.
But he did not choose the way he died. He did not choose to be taken from this world that early. I cry for justice for Attorney Ben.
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